A video meet on Monday was held between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and negotiator of Taliban’s chief, Mullah Baradar Akhund where they discussed the peace process in Afghanistan, according to an insurgent spokesman.
Taking this to Twitter, Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban spokesman in Doha said, “The discussions included the issue of Taliban prisoners whose release by the Afghan government the insurgents are demanding.”
According to the Taliban, they want their people who are imprisoned to be free if they want the settlement of the war for decades before joining talks with any government official and Afghans.
Shaheen in his tweet wrote, “Both sides talked about the inception of intra-Afghan negotiations” and they emphasized that the release of the remaining prisoners is essential for commencement of intra-Afghan negotiations.”
The meeting between Pompeo and Baradar, the Taliban’s Doha-based deputy leader, came as Afghan security forces ended a siege of a major prison in eastern Afghanistan by Islamic State militants in which hundreds of prisoners escaped.
The intra-Afghan peace talks that were to be held on 10th March this year got delayed as the Taliban continues to demand the release of their prisoners.
According to the US-Taliban agreement on Feb. 29, US troop withdrawal called for Kabul to free up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners in return for the release by the insurgents of up to 1,000 government detainees.
The Taliban has released around 1,000 detainees. The Afghan government, under US pressure, has freed around 4,600 Taliban prisoners named on a list compiled by the insurgents.
The president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, still resists releasing the remaining 400 people from the list saying that those were involved in serious crimes, including a massive 2017 bombing against the German embassy and other bloody attacks.
Instead, Ghani is expected to release 500 prisoners who are not on the list and has called a traditional assembly of tribal elders from across the country – known as a loya jirga – to consult on whether to free those remaining on the list.
The assembly is expected to be held later this month.