The talks were held on Tuesday at Murree, a hill resort on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and were observed by both the United States and China, a statement from Pakistan’s foreign ministry said.
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When the US-led invasion ousted the militants in 2001 many of their leaders took refuge in Pakistan and still live there, closely monitored by intelligence agencies.
Afghan security personnel take position at the site of an attack in front of the parliament building in Kabul on 22 June 2015.
“The participants were duly mandated by their respective leadership and expressed their collective desire to bring peace to Afghanistan and the region”, the statement claimed. Top battlefield commander Abdul Qayum Zakir, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, objected to sending the delegation for talks with Kabul, as indicated by a lower-level Taliban commander in Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan.
Official efforts to open negotiations with the Taliban have borne little fruit, but informal talks have taken place several times in the recent past, veiled in secrecy.
An Afghan government delegation has arrived in Pakistan to hold direct talks with representatives of the Taliban militant group.
Earlier, police officials told Al Jazeera that at least three Afghan civilians were wounded in the Shah Shaheed district of Kabul when, also in the city’s east, a Taliban fighter drove a car bomb in to a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation convoy.
“This is an important step in advancing prospects for a credible peace”, said White House Press Secretary, Josh Earnest. While both the Taliban and the Afghan government have said that a political solution is the only way to end the conflict, for much of the past decade the Taliban were more interested in negotiating an American exit from the war than dealing with the government in Kabul. Ghani was due to meet Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to discuss the peace initiative this week at a regional summit in Russian Federation, the official said. Privately, Taliban members have indicated to the Afghan government that they wanted clarification from Washington on the future US and coalition troop presence in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan and Pakistan began a new set of secretive “negotiations” with the Taliban on Tuesday amid an uptick in violence in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
About 9800 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, down from a peak of more than 100,000 in 2011.
But there have been no major breakthroughs and the militants have kept up their barrage of attacks on foreign and Afghan forces.
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“[The] delegation included representatives from all parts of the Afghan society”, the official said.
