Afghan Taliban suspends talks with US
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E-mail Xinhua, March 15, 2012
The Afghan Taliban has suspended preliminary peace talks with the United States, according to a statement of the outfit released on Thursday.
"Islamic Emirate (name of the ousted Taliban regime) has decided to suspend all talks with Americans taking place in Qatar from today onwards until the Americans clarify their stance on the issues concerned and until they show willingness in carrying out their promises instead of wasting time," the statement said.
Taliban militants, fighting Afghan and NATO-led forces in a decade-long insurgency for the first time on January this year announced that they are involved in a preliminary talks with the U. S. and in this regard opened a political office in Qatar.
It further noted that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has also demanded the release of its prisoners from U.S. detention center in Guantanamo.
The Taliban statement also denied that the Afghan government was involved the peace talks in Qatar.
The Taliban in the statement said that a memorandum of understanding which was agreed earlier was not yet fulfilled as a U.S. representative presented a list of conditions in his latest meeting with Taliban envoys "were not only unacceptable but also in contradiction with the earlier agreed upon points."
"The inauguration of political office in Qatar was not but for the sake of reaching an understanding with the outside world and particularly for the exchange of prisoners with the Americans in the initial stages," the statement added.
"But it seems that the Americans and their stooge regime took advantage of these measures of Islamic Emirate and sought to achieve other malicious objectives and therefore are postponing the core issues and are wasting time," it said.
The Taliban outfit had in the past repeatedly rejected the Afghan government's offers for talks, saying there will be no dialogue in the presence of foreign forces in the country.
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