(TOLO News): The team is expected to share the details of its latest consultations with President Ashraf Ghani before its departure, and will also hold a meeting with the leadership committee of the High Council for National Reconciliation on Monday. The first round of the talks continued for three months, with the Republic and Taliban negotiators agreeing on procedural rules for the talks and sharing verbally their demands for agenda points with each other. Peace negotiators representing the Afghan republic said that the next round of talks will mainly focus on ending the violence and the structure of a future government. “The negotiating team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will travel to Qatar after consultation with different layers of society, including political, social and cultural,” said Ghulam Farooq Majroh, a negotiator. “The negotiating team of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan will be in the talks venue at the specific time for the next round of the talks,” said Najia Anwari, spokesperson for the State Ministry for Peace Affairs. The negotiating team held three meetings with the leadership committee of the High Council for National Reconciliation during their 23-day break that was aimed at further discussions around the next steps in the process. “The president has directed them (negotiators) to hold talks with different layers of Afghanistan’s (society). They held consultations and they are expected to brief the president on their consultations,” a presidential spokesman Dawa Khan Minapal said. A peace negotiator, Abdul Hafiz Mansoor, on Saturday, said that there are concerns about a lack of consensus on issues around peace, adding that the Taliban is seeking an interim government. “They are seeking an interim government, but most countries in the region see this as an American plan,” Mansoor said. The peace negotiations are expected to resume as violence remains high in the country, raising concerns about the future of the process. Meanwhile, William Maley, professor of diplomacy at the Australian National University, said the political and security situation in Afghanistan at present is notably troubled and there are a range of reasons for why that is the case. “There’s one other fundamental problem with the (peace) process which has blighted it from the very first day in which it was announced and that is a complete neglect of the problem flowing from the access the Taliban enjoy to sanctuaries in Pakistan where they continue to be armed and supported by the inter-services intelligence directorate of the Pakistan armed forces, something that became very clear during Mullah Baradar’s visit to Pakistan, in which he was filmed in a range of environments that pointed dramatically to the scale and significance of ongoing Pakistani support,” he said. Both sides of the negotiations have been discussing the agenda of the talks with their respective leaders over the last 22 days. The Republic team has put ceasefire on the top of their list while the Taliban has insisted that they will talk about ceasefire after an agreement on a future government.
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