(TOLO News): This comes as the Taliban has demanded the release of 7,000 more prisoners, the removal of the group’s members from the UN blacklist, and the formation of an Islamic system in order to continue the peace talks, according to peace talks. \u201cWe are not in favor of releasing more Taliban prisoners,\u201d Omar said. \u00a0The release of over 5,000 Taliban prisoners before was intended to reduce violence as the part of the peace process, Omar said, but \u201cviolence has increased because of it.\u201d\u00a0 In the meantime, Republic negotiator Abdul Hafiz Mansoor on Monday said that the negotiating team has decided that the legitimacy of the war must be discussed with the Taliban before any progress can be made. \u00a0He said the talks will not have an outcome until this issue is clarified. \u00a0On Sunday, the chief negotiators from the Afghan republic and the Taliban met; however, the working groups from both sides failed to meet on Monday to finalize the agenda for the talks.\u00a0 Three meetings were held in the first days since the talks resumed on January 6, but the working groups from both sides have not met for the last six days.\u00a0According to negotiator Nader Nadery, it was only the heads of the two teams and a limited amount of members who met on Sunday evening and discussed the agenda.\u00a0 The lack of meetings was criticized by Abdullah Abdullah, head of the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR), who met with a number of foreign diplomats at a virtual event to discuss coordination around the peace efforts. Abdullah said the peace efforts must be expedited.\u00a0NCNR also urged that the security and reduction in violence in the country is on priority of the Republic negotiating team.\u00a0Rahmatullah Nabil, former head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), said that talking about the legitimacy of the war \u201cis late,\u201d and until the policy of President-elect Joe Biden on Afghanistan has been made known, the Afghan peace process will have an\u201cunclear fate.”\u00a0\u201cThe peace process is being delayed, and, at the end, a draft will be shared with both sides and (the US) will tell you Afghans ‘you are not capable of solving your big issues and this is our plan and you sign it,’\u201d Nabil said.\u00a0Omar said \u201cwe hope that the new US administration will work in coordination with the Afghan government on peace.\u201d Earlier this week, the US Department of Defense in a statement confirmed that the number of US forces in Afghanistan has reached 2,500 as directed by President Donald Trump. \u201cToday, the United States is closer than ever to ending nearly two decades of war and welcoming in an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led peace process to achieve a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire,\u201d US acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller said in the statement. A Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem welcomed the move as a step forward toward resolving the conflict in the country. The US-Taliban deal signed on February 29 last year raised hopes among Afghans for a reduction in violence but the Taliban, in defiance of the international community, continued their attacks against the Afghan government forces. However, so far, there has been no major progress between the Republic negotiating team and Taliban.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(TOLO News): This comes as the Taliban has demanded the release of 7,000 more prisoners, the removal of the group’s members from the UN blacklist, and the formation of an Islamic system in order to continue the peace talks, according to peace talks. \u201cWe are not in favor of releasing more Taliban prisoners,\u201d Omar said. […]<\/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-3268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268","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=3268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3269,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3268\/revisions\/3269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}