(ATN News): The Taliban and the Kabul government are far apart in U.S.-backed talks on bringing peace to Afghanistan, with the insurgents demanding \u201cthe lion\u2019s share of power\u201d in any new government, the special U.S. envoy said on Tuesday. Afghan-born veteran U.S. diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad\u2019s bleak assessment of the peace process coincides with Taliban advances on provincial capitals that have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians as the U.S. troop pullout nears completion after 20 years of war. \u201cAt this point, they (the Taliban) are demanding that they take the lion\u2019s share of power in the next government given the military situation as they see it,\u201d Khalilzad told the Aspen Security Forum in an online conference. The deadlocked negotiations in Doha were the subject of a telephone call on Tuesday between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, with them agreeing on the need accelerate talks, the U.S. State Department said. Blinken and Ghani also \u201ccondemned the ongoing Taliban attacks and displacement of the civilian population,\u201d State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. The Taliban\u2019s rapid advances have fueled fears that the insurgents aim to re-establish by force their harsh brand of Islamist rule ended by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, including the repression of women and the independent media. The insurgents say they want a peace deal. Price told reporters that the insurgents would become \u201cinternational pariahs\u201d if they renege on their commitment to the negotiations \u201cand the concern on the part of all of us, one of the many concerns, is that the result will be civil war.\u201d A car bomb blast followed by sporadic gunfire hit Kabul on Tuesday near the heavily fortified \u201cGreen Zone,\u201d leaving three civilians and three attackers dead. Khalilzad was the architect of the U.S.-Taliban deal for a U.S. troop pullout reached in February 2020. In his rare public assessment of the Doha talks started under that deal, Khalilzad said peace can only be reached through a ceasefire and negotiations that would establish a transitional government. Ghani\u2019s administration says the talks should focus on \u201cbringing the Taliban into the current government,\u201d he said. The Taliban contend that Ghani\u2019s government \u201cis the result of military occupation\u201d and they want an agreement on a transitional government and constitution, Khalilzad continued. \u201cThey are far apart,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are trying to affect each other\u2019s calculus and the terms by what they are doing on the battlefield.\u201d Khalilzad said that 40 years of continuous conflict \u201chas no legitimacy any more.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a struggle for a balance of power, dispensation of power between various factions, and no Afghans, especially civilian Afghans, should die because of that,\u201d he added in remarks that risked angering the U.S.-backed Ghani government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(ATN News): The Taliban and the Kabul government are far apart in U.S.-backed talks on bringing peace to Afghanistan, with the insurgents demanding \u201cthe lion\u2019s share of power\u201d in any new government, the special U.S. envoy said on Tuesday. Afghan-born veteran U.S. diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad\u2019s bleak assessment of the peace process coincides with Taliban advances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3618,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3617\/revisions\/3618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}