(The Voice of America): Two back-to-back international meetings are being convened in Qatar this week to press Afghanistan\u2019s warring parties to resume peace negotiations and reach a deal before the Afghan conflict spirals out of control. The diplomatic effort comes amid dramatic battlefield advances by Taliban insurgents even as the United States continues airstrikes in support of embattled Afghan government forces. It also follows last week\u2019s warning by the United Nations that \u201cthe war in Afghanistan has entered a new, deadlier, and more destructive phase.\u201d The U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and his counterparts from Russia, China and Pakistan, will meet in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Wednesday under what is officially known as the \u201cextended troika,\u201d diplomatic sources told VOA. The Moscow-initiated group conducts regular consultations on ways to support intra-Afghan negotiations to help the parties reach a political settlement and a permanent and comprehensive cease-fire. The extended troika will hold consultations before meeting Doha-based Taliban and Kabul government representatives who are engaged in slow-moving intra-Afghan peace negotiations there, VOA learned from reliable sources at the Pakistani Foreign Ministry.\u00a0 The extended troika will be preceded by a meeting on Tuesday of Afghanistan\u2019s immediate neighbors. Russia, the United Nations and United States have also been invited to Tuesday\u2019s meeting. The goal of both discussions will be \u201cto seek a possible common ground\u201d between the two Afghan adversaries \u201cat a time when (the Taliban) have started occupying provincial capitals,\u201d the Foreign Ministry sources said. Pakistan\u2019s special envoy for Afghanistan, Muhammad Sadiq, and the country\u2019s ambassador to Kabul, Mansoor Khan, will be visiting Doha to attend the Afghan peace-related meetings there, the sources added. \u201cWe are always looking for ways and means to help accelerate the negotiations because we don’t see a military solution to the war in Afghanistan,\u201d Khalilzad told VOA last week. \u00a0\u201cThere must be a political solution, a political agreement for a lasting peace, and we will stay with it. We are committed to staying with it until that goal is achieved,\u201d the U.S. envoy pledged. \u00a0The Taliban advances have raised the prospects of the Islamist group\u2019s return to power in Afghanistan.\u00a0 \u00a0At its last meeting in April this year, the extended troika had warned the insurgents not to attempt to militarily seize control of the Afghan capital, Kabul.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cWe do not support the establishment in Afghanistan of any government imposed by force,\u201d said a joint statement issued at the time. The peace efforts come as United States troops, under directives by U.S. President Joe Biden, are set to leave Afghanistan, along with its NATO-allied troops, by the end of this month after 20 years. The withdrawal is a crucial outcome of Washington\u2019s peace-building agreement that the Taliban and United States signed in February 2020 when Donald Trump was U.S. president. But the intra-Afghan negotiations that stemmed from the landmark deal have failed to make any significant progress and are stalled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(The Voice of America): Two back-to-back international meetings are being convened in Qatar this week to press Afghanistan\u2019s warring parties to resume peace negotiations and reach a deal before the Afghan conflict spirals out of control. The diplomatic effort comes amid dramatic battlefield advances by Taliban insurgents even as the United States continues airstrikes in […]<\/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-3644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archived-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644","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=3644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3645,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3644\/revisions\/3645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/caps.af\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}