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Afghan Government and Taliban Announce Revolutionary Agreement to Move Forward with Peace Talks
KABUL: The Afghan government and representatives of the Taliban said on Wednesday that they had reached a preliminary agreement to go ahead with the peace talks, their first written agreement in 19 years of war.
The agreement sets the way forward for further discussion, but is seen as a breakthrough because it will allow negotiators to move on to more substantive issues, including talks on a ceasefire.
“The procedure, including the preamble to the negotiation, has been finalized and, from now on, the negotiation will start on the agenda,” Nader Nadery, a member of the Afghan government negotiating team, told Reuters.
The Taliban spokesman confirmed the same on Twitter.
The agreement comes after months of discussions in Doha, the capital of Qatar, in negotiations encouraged by the United States. In Afghanistan, the two sides are still at war and the Taliban’s attacks on government forces continue unabated.
Taliban insurgents have refused to agree to a ceasefire during the preliminary stages of the talks, despite calls from Western capitals and world bodies, saying that will only be addressed when the way forward for the talks is agreed.
The UN envoy for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, welcomed the “positive development” on Twitter, adding that “this progress should be a stepping stone to achieve the peace desired by all Afghans.”
Last month, an agreement reached between the Taliban and government negotiators was delayed at the last minute after insurgents opposed the document’s preamble because it mentioned the Afghan government by name.
The Taliban refused to refer to the Afghan negotiating team as representatives of the Afghan government, as they question the legitimacy of the administration led by President Ashraf Ghani.
