Alwaght- The Taliban group has revived its secret talks with the Afghan government, where a US representative was present for the first time, British Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Senior Taliban members attended the talks including Mullah Abdul Manan Akhund, brother of Mullah Omar, the former Taliban chief who led the movement from its earliest days until his death in 2013.
The new talks were held in September and October in Qatar where Taliban was granted permission to set up an office in the capital Doha in 2013.
Previous rounds of negotiations, brokered by Pakistan, entirely broke down following the death of Mullah Akhtar Mansoor in a US drone strike.
The report cited senior Taliban sources as saying that Qatar was not present in the talks and Pakistan has lost much of its influence over the movement. The source says Mullah Omar’s son, Mohammad Yaqoob, is expected to soon join the Doha group, in a move that would further bolster the authority of the office.
The source also said a senior US diplomat was present at the meetings for the first time, the US embassy in Kabul declined to comment on the issue.
The Taliban official said the first meeting in early September “went positively and was held in a trouble-free atmosphere” in which Akhund sat face to face with Mohammed Masoom Stanekzai, Afghanistan’s intelligence chief.
A second meeting took place in early October, despite continued fighting between government and insurgent forces.
Despite the unremitting violence, Kabul remains committed to trying to find a political solution to the conflict. Late last month it finalized a peace deal with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had fought against the US-backed regime for more than a decade.
Although an Afghan government official confirmed Stanekzai had made at least one recent trip to Doha, both Ashraf Ghani’s spokesman and, Ismail Qasemiyar, a senior member of the High Peace Council charged with overseeing peace talks, denied any knowledge of the meetings.
