After the movement's threat to withdraw from the talks, Kabul releases 100 Taliban detainees

The Al-Jazeera correspondent in Afghanistan quoted a spokesman for the Afghan National Security Council, Javed Faisal, as saying that the government released a hundred detainees from the Taliban movement today, Wednesday, according to the decision of President Muhammad Ashraf Ghani.

Faisal said that there are not among the released 15 leaders who are demanding the release of the Taliban, adding that the movement must take serious steps to make this process a success, and not undertake actions that hinder it.

This development comes after talks between the two parties on the exchange of detainees faltered as a confidence-building measure to implement the peace agreement concluded in Doha at the end of February, and the Taliban movement had asked its technical delegation in charge of discussing the exchange of detainees to leave the Afghan capital.

The spokesman for the movement's political office, Suhail Shaheen, said earlier that the agreement signed with Washington provides for the release of the detainees in preparation for the start of Afghan negotiations. Considering that the release process was deliberately postponed, which is contrary to the text of the peace agreement.

Because the detainees' exchange talks faltered, the Taliban accused the Afghan government of failing the Doha agreement, and called on Washington to ensure its provisions are implemented.

Yesterday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented on the call of the Kabul government to implement the terms of the agreement so that Washington could in turn fulfill its pledges.

A Taliban delegation had arrived late last month in Doha, carrying with him the names of detainees the movement is calling for their release as part of the confidence-building measures.

The Afghan government is supposed to release at the first stage the 1,500 detainees it has, and the Al-Jazeera correspondent recently said that the priority will be for the elderly, the sick, and those whose sentences are nearing the end.

In addition to the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan within 14 months, the Doha peace agreement stipulated the exchange of detainees between the Afghan government and the Taliban precursor to direct talks between them.

According to the agreement, the Afghan government is supposed to release five thousand Taliban militants, and that the movement in return release about a thousand government forces held by it.