New meeting of a Taliban delegation with American officials in Doha

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said that the American Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and General Scott Miller met in the Qatari capital Doha with a delegation from the movement headed by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

The talks - which took place despite the global pandemic of the Corona virus - came after some progress on the prisoners' release, as Kabul released about 300 detainees, while the Taliban released a first batch of government prisoners.

The dispute over the release of prisoners, the increase in attacks by the Taliban and other issues has frozen efforts to end the longest American wars and decades of conflict in Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the Taliban office in Doha said on Twitter that the two sides discussed "the full implementation" of the agreement concluded by the United States and the Taliban last February 29 regarding the withdrawal of US forces in stages from Afghanistan "in addition to the delay in the release of prisoners."

He added that "violations of the agreement and other issues and ways to solve them were discussed." The Taliban last week accused the United States of violating the agreement by supporting Afghan security forces operations in some areas of the country, and warned that any such support would jeopardize the agreement.

The US State Department announced yesterday, Monday, that the American envoy Khalilzad will meet representatives of the Afghan Taliban in Doha, with the aim of discussing current issues related to the implementation of the agreement between the United States and the movement.

The Doha agreement provided for reducing the number of troops from about 13,000 to 8,600 military personnel within 135 days.

The agreement calls for the release of about five thousand detainees from the Taliban and up to a thousand prisoners from the government, in preparation for the start of peace negotiations that were supposed to take place last March 10 between the movement and an Afghan delegation that includes officials from the Kabul government.

The Taliban demanded the release of the 5,000 prisoners before they participated in the talks, and President Ashraf Ghani - whose government was not a party to the agreement - rejected the movement's request.