US envoy shows draft of deal to Afghan leaders

The US envoy leading efforts to forge a deal with the Taliban met with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in Kabul yesterday and showed him the draft of a proposed agreement with the insurgents. Zalmay Khalilzad has spent about a year meeting with the Taliban in Doha in a series of talks aimed at ending America’s 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The prospective deal centres on a US troop reduction in return for several security guarantees from the Taliban, as well as broader peace talks between the insurgents and the Afghan government and an eventual ceasefire. Khalilzad -- a former US ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq -- arrived in the Afghan capital Sunday evening following a ninth round of talks with the Taliban in the Qatari capital.

He met with Ghani then and on Monday he showed the Afghan leader a draft of the US-Taliban agreement, officials said. The discussions are significant because the Afghan government has until now been largely sidelined from talks, though any eventual deal would require the Taliban to talk to Ghani, whom they view as a US stooge.

“The efforts of the US and other partners will yield results when the Taliban enters direct negotiations with the Afghan government,” Ghani’s spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told reporters. “We hope these efforts will lead to an end to the conflict.” When asked to describe the deal, Sediqqi demurred, saying “the most important thing is that the Taliban’s violence stops”.

“We are hopeful that any agreement to be signed between the United States and the Taliban results in peace and ceasefire,” Sediqqi said. Afghanistan’s Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah said in a statement he too had been briefed and assured of “a thorough and sustainable peace in Afghanistan”.