(AL Arabiya News): he exchange of three senior Taliban prisoners for two foreign hostages announced by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has been delayed, a spokesman said on Saturday. The Taliban prisoners \u201care still being held by the Afghan government. The inability of the Taliban to meet the conditions has caused a delay in the exchange,\u201d Ghani\u2019s spokesman Sediq Sediqqi wrote on Twitter. The government \u201cwill review the exchange process in light of Afghanistan\u2019s national interests,\u201d he said, without providing further details. Ghani announced the exchange on Tuesday, saying the Taliban prisoners held at Bagram prison would be \u201cconditionally\u201d released. They include Anas Haqqani, who was seized in 2014 and whose older brother is the deputy Taliban leader and head of the Haqqani network, a notorious Taliban affiliate. The two foreign hostages – American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks – were kidnapped by gunmen wearing military uniforms in Kabul in August 2016. Ghani said that \u201ctheir health has been deteriorating while in the custody of the terrorists.\u201d He added that the release of the two men, both professors, would \u201cpave the way\u201d for the start of unofficial direct talks between his government and the Taliban, who long have refused to negotiate with Ghani\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(AL Arabiya News): he exchange of three senior Taliban prisoners for two foreign hostages announced by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has been delayed, a spokesman said on Saturday. The Taliban prisoners \u201care still being held by the Afghan government. The inability of the Taliban to meet the conditions has caused a delay in the exchange,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2340,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions\/2340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}