US-Taliban Peace Talks Restart In Qatar After 3-Month Break

US-Taliban Peace Talks Restart in Qatar After 3-Month Break

Negotiators from the United States and the Taliban met in the Qatari capital of Doha on Saturday, in what is a bid to revive peace talks that were broken off in September

KABUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th December, 2019) Negotiators from the United States and the Taliban met in the Qatari capital of Doha on Saturday, in what is a bid to revive peace talks that were broken off in September.

"Today, the negotiating team of the Islamic Emirate [Taliban], under the leadership of Mullah Beradar Akhund, has resumed talks with the US negotiating team where they stopped [in September]," Taliban spokesman Sohail Shaheen said on Twitter.

The Taliban team was headed by co-founder Abdul Ghani Beradar. Anas Haqqani of the Haqqani Network was also present.

"The talks will last a week and may lead to the signing of an agreement between the Taliban and the US on December 15," a source in Qatar told Sputnik.

The sides have discussed a US-Taliban deal that would guarantee that Afghanistan would not be used to harbor foreign terrorists, as well as related topics.

The Afghan government did not comment on the news, but Pakistan welcomed the meeting and offered its help as a mediator.

"We welcome the resumption of peace talks with the Taliban by the US, Pakistan will continue to play its role in peace talks," the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has recently asked his US counterpart, Donald Trump, that a ceasefire should be agreed before the peace talks began.

Trump announced the restart of talks during a surprise Thanksgiving visit to a US military base in Afghanistan last week. He abruptly ended the negotiations three months ago after a Taliban-claimed bomb blast in Kabul killed several people, including a US soldier.