Afghan government sources revealed to Al-Jazeera that US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that coordination will be made with regional countries to achieve lasting peace in Afghanistan.
And government sources who have seen a message sent by the US Secretary to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani indicated that Blinken said that Washington would invite Turkey to host a conference for the Taliban and the Afghan government at an unspecified time.
The same sources pointed out that Washington will ask the United Nations to discuss a plan for peace in Afghanistan, and the goal of all these steps is to accelerate the Afghan negotiations and involve all parties in them.
Those sources quoted the US Secretary of State as saying that Washington has not completed its review of the situation in Afghanistan, an approach that US President Joe Biden launched after his arrival to the White House on January 20, especially regarding the historic peace agreement with the Taliban.
In a related context, Afghan media reported that Blinken confirmed in a message to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the United States is considering withdrawing its forces completely from Afghanistan by May 1, and that it is also considering other options.
An American proposal
The Afghan sources ’talk comes at a time when the Taliban movement and the Kabul government - each separately - are studying an American proposal for the future of peace in Afghanistan and the form of the next government, while the movement has made wide changes in a number of key positions within it.
Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdallah Moheb said that involving the Taliban in power would not guarantee peace in Afghanistan.
Moheb added that the US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad handed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and a number of politicians his own vision on power-sharing among the Afghan parties, noting that this vision is for the US envoy and does not express Washington’s vision for peace in Afghanistan.
For his part, a member of the Afghan government delegation to the peace negotiations, Nader Naderi, said that Kabul is carefully studying what Khalilzad has proposed regarding the future of peace and the form of government in Afghanistan, adding that the path to peace is still difficult and needs a lot of work.
A Taliban source told Al-Jazeera that the US envoy to Afghanistan handed the movement a copy of Washington's new vision for peace in the country.
The source added that the movement requested time to respond to the US proposal it received during Khalilzad’s meetings in Doha with representatives of the Taliban’s political bureau.