Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced that he does not have the powers to release the last batch of "400" Taliban fighters, stressing that the decision to release them requires the approval of the expanded Reconciliation Council (Loya Jirga).

"I do not have the right to decide on the release of these 400 prisoners accused of serious crimes," Ghani said, adding that a group of Afghan notables would decide their fate. There was no comment from the Taliban, who insist on their immediate release.

"To demonstrate goodwill and accelerate peace talks, we will release 500 Taliban prisoners in response to the 3-day ceasefire declaration that was issued by the movement," Ghani said in a speech on the occasion of the holiday, explaining that the release of these would constitute a continuation of the government's pledge to release 5,000 Taliban fighters under An agreement signed by the movement with Washington.

These 500 prisoners are not on the original list of 5,000 prisoners the Taliban have requested release. The Kabul authorities have released 4,600 of them, but they are reluctant to release the other 400 who they consider extremely dangerous.

"The Taliban have completed the process of releasing the Afghan government," the movement's Tala News News recently quoted Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the movement, as saying.

He added that the movement released 82 new prisoners today, bringing the total number of detainees released by the Taliban to 1005 prisoners.

The Taliban had previously announced that they were ready to release all detained Afghan soldiers before Eid al-Adha, and to start negotiations with the Afghan authorities if the prisoner exchange took place.

Today, Friday, a 3-day cease-fire began between the Afghan government and the Taliban on the occasion of the blessed Eid Al-Adha, amid hopes that negotiations - to be held after the Eid holiday in the Qatari capital, Doha - will lead to peace between the two parties.

These negotiations were scheduled to start on March 10, but this date has been exceeded due to the slow process of prisoner exchange that the Taliban requires to complete before then.

On February 29, Doha witnessed an agreement between the United States and the Taliban, paving the way, according to a timetable, for a gradual US withdrawal from Afghanistan and a prisoner exchange.

The agreement stipulated the release of about 5,000 Taliban prisoners, compared to about 1,000 prisoners from the Afghan government.

Afghanistan has been plagued by war since October 2001, when an international military alliance toppled the Taliban, because it was then linked to al Qaeda, which claimed the September 11 attacks of the same year, in the United States.