Washington (AFP)
US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad was scheduled to leave the United States on Tuesday to travel to Doha, where he will resume talks with the Taliban in hopes of concluding an agreement allowing the withdrawal of US soldiers.
He will then travel to Kabul for further consultations with "Afghan government leaders on the peace process" and to "encourage" preparations for inter-Afghan negotiations, the US State Department said in a statement.
The United States began a year ago an unprecedented direct dialogue with the Taliban, whose last session ended less than ten days ago in Qatar. Both parties had hailed "excellent progress".
The administration of Donald Trump does not hide that it hopes that this new round of talks in Doha can be the last and lead to an agreement with the insurgents.
Such an agreement should provide for a more or less complete US military withdrawal, with a timetable to the key. This is the main demand of the Taliban who would in return commit that the territories they control can no longer be used by "terrorist" organizations. The Taliban would also agree, for the first time, to start peace negotiations with the Kabul government, which could start very quickly in Oslo.
A cease-fire between insurgents and Americans, or at least a "reduction of violence", should also be included in the text, which would be historic 18 years after the United States' invasion of Afghanistan for to drive the Taliban out of power in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But the modalities, scale and timing of the US withdrawal, still unknown, raise many fears from a part of the political class and observers in Washington who fear the eagerness of Donald Trump to leave Afghanistan before the presidential election of 2020 in the United States at the risk of aggravating the civil war and revive the terrorist threat.
© 2019 AFP