The third round of negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban resumed in Doha

Mutlaq Al-Qahtani, the Qatari Foreign Minister's Special Envoy for Counter-Terrorism and Mediation in Dispute Resolution, met with US envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad in the Qatari capital.

The Qatar News Agency said that during the meeting, they discussed the peace process in Afghanistan and the ongoing talks in Doha between the Afghan parties.

Al-Qahtani also met with the head of the Taliban's negotiating team, Sheikh Abdul Hakim Khadaydad.

The delegations of the Afghan government and the Taliban resumed the third round of negotiations - today, Wednesday - in Doha, and a spokesman for the government delegation said that it was agreed to speed up the negotiations and their agenda.

For his part, Muhammad Naim, a spokesman for the Taliban's political office, told Al Jazeera in a previous bulletin that the heads of the two delegations discussed the mechanism for accelerating talks and setting the agenda for future meetings.

withdrawal of forces

Yesterday, Tuesday, the Taliban announced the launch of a new round of negotiations with the Afghan government in Doha.

"The topic of the meetings in this round is about ways to speed up the negotiation process to consolidate the peace process in Afghanistan," said Sohail Shaheen, the movement's political spokesman.

This is the first direct meeting between the Afghan government and Taliban delegations since the United States announced the start of withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan last April.

And the US military announced last week that it had completed about 44% of the process of withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan, as President Joe Biden set next September 11 as a deadline for withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan.

The new round of negotiations - the third of its kind - comes on the impact of escalating violence in Afghanistan.

Today, Wednesday, the Afghan Ministry of Interior accused the Taliban of being responsible for an armed attack yesterday evening, which killed 10 deminers in Baghlan Province (north), but the movement denied its connection to the attack.

Qatar plays the role of mediator in negotiations between Washington and the Taliban, which resulted in the signing of a historic agreement in late February 2020 for a gradual US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the exchange of prisoners.