Afghanistan’s government said it regretted the postponement of the second formal face-to-face meeting with the Taliban.
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Negotiations with the Afghan government, scheduled for Friday, were postponed on the Taliban’s request as they searched for their new leader.
Mansoor is a “key figure” in the Taliban organisation, serving as the governor of Kandahar before the American invasion, he said. “His death appears to have been just as mysterious”, it said.
“The government of Afghanistan believes that grounds for the Afghan peace talks are more paved now than before, and thus calls on all armed opposition groups to seize the opportunity and join the peace process”.
In Islamabad in 2011, Vice President Biden warned then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani that relations with Afghanistan would not improve until Pakistan answered hard questions including “what do we say about Mullah Omar”, the report said citing a diplomatic document.
Like the diplomat, he spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to media on the subject.
The news comes as a Taliban representative and the group’s Twitter account confirmed the death of Omar Mullah.
“I believe that under him the peace process will be strengthened and the Taliban will become part of political process in Afghanistan”.
Analysts and diplomats said those divisions could hamper progress in the short term. The acknowledgment did not give any details of when Mullah Omar died or from what illness.
A report in the New York Times said, “Yet even by Mullah Omar’s standards, his elusiveness in his final years was remarkable”.
“Announcement of Omar’s death will spark an existential crisis for the Taliban, and the last thing that will be on its mind are peace talks”.
In this photograph released by banned organization Jamaat ud Dawa (JuD) on July 30, 2015, the leader of the Jud, Hafiz Saeed (front left), leads the absentia funeral prayer in Lahore for Afghanistan’s Taliban chief Mullah Omar, who was confirmed as dead earlier in the day by the Taliban movement he founded.
Afghan forces also retook control Friday of Naw Zad district in Helmand province after three days of fierce fighting with the Taliban, the officials said.
In the statement, Mullah Omar’s family praised his dedication to jihad, or holy war, against the U.S.-led coalition and said it was the “duty of all Muslims” to follow his example by establishing Sharia law in Afghanistan. But it also makes the post-Omar Taliban a much more dire enemy for the upstart group, which has fighters of its own in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In comments to the Associated Press, Taliban officials said the group’s supreme council had met in Pakistan and picked Akhtar Mohammed Mansour, Omar’s longtime senior aide, to replace him.
Two deputy leaders Sirajuddin Haqqani, leader of the Haqqani network and Maulauvi Haibatullah, the chief justice and head of the Ulema council, were also chosen to assist Mullah Mansoor.
An editorial in the News global said that Mullah Omar, who led the Taliban after it seized power in Kabul in 1996, lived in secrecy.
Pakistan-based security expert Rahimullah Yusufzai said that it had been Mansoor who convinced the Taliban leadership to send a delegation to peace talks that began this month.
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Mujahid said earlier on Thursday that the Taliban’s official team of negotiators based in Doha was “not aware of this process” in Pakistan.
