• Kabul, car bomb near US embassy: dead and wounded
  • Afghanistan, a US soldier killed in a Taliban attack, the tenth this year
  • Born: no decision taken on withdrawal from Afghanistan
  • The USA away from Syria and Afghanistan: the defense minister resigns

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08 September 2019The president of the United States has canceled a secret summit with the Taliban and the leader of Afghanistan, slamming the door sharply on a year of diplomacy to end America's longest war. Donald Trump said he planned unprecedented, though separate, talks with the two sides for today at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, but that the persistent and grisly Taliban violence campaign made them unreliable partners.

"Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the main Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, would have met me secretly at Camp David on Sunday," Trump wrote in a tweet. "Unfortunately, to build a negotiating position, they admitted that they had launched an attack on Kabul that killed one of our great soldiers and 11 others. I immediately canceled the meeting and canceled peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill that way "So many people to seemingly reinforce their negotiating position? They didn't, they only made things worse. If they can't agree on a ceasefire during these very important peace talks and even kill 12 innocent people, they probably don't have the power." to negotiate a significant agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight? "

Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and to the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to ..

- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019
Afghan fundamentalists have claimed Thursday's attack in Kabul in which an American soldier was killed, among others. First-class Sergeant Elis A. Barreto Ortiz, originally from Puerto Rico, was identified by the Pentagon in the past few hours. It is the fourth US military to fall into Afghanistan in two weeks.

Last Monday - the BBC recalls - the American negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad had announced a peace agreement "in principle" with the Taliban. As part of the proposed agreement, the United States would withdraw 5,400 soldiers from Afghanistan within 20 weeks. However, Khalilzad had specified that the final approval of the plan was up to President Trump.