(DID press): The Taliban said Friday it was \u201cway too early\u201d to speak of resuming direct talks with Washington, a day after President Donald Trump confirmed negotiations to end America\u2019s longest war, were back on track during a surprise visit to Afghanistan. \u201cWe\u2019re meeting with them and we\u2019re saying it has to be a ceasefire,\u201d he told reporters during the visit to mark the Thanksgiving holiday with troops at Bagram air field. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid, meanwhile, said that it is too early to speak of resuming talks with America. \u201cIt is way too early to talk about the resumption of talks for now,\u201d the insurgent spokesman told AFP, adding that the Islamist group would give an official reaction later. Last month, Trump abruptly called the peace talks with Taliban \u201cdead\u201d, and withdrew an invitation to the insurgents to meet in the United States due to the killing of an American soldier. \u201cWe were getting close and we pulled back. We didn\u2019t want to do it because of what they did,\u201d Trump said at Bagram during a meeting with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, referring to the death of the soldier. \u201cSince then, we\u2019ve hit them so hard, they\u2019ve never been hit this hard,\u201d he added. This comes as the Taliban last week handed over two hostages \u2014 an American and an Australian \u2014 after three years in captivity in exchange for three high-ranking Haqqani members, a move seen as a boost to resuming negotiations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(DID press): The Taliban said Friday it was \u201cway too early\u201d to speak of resuming direct talks with Washington, a day after President Donald Trump confirmed negotiations to end America\u2019s longest war, were back on track during a surprise visit to Afghanistan. \u201cWe\u2019re meeting with them and we\u2019re saying it has to be a ceasefire,\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-2422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2422","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=2422"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2423,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2422\/revisions\/2423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}