The United States has agreed to provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, which is close to economic disaster, but refuses to politically recognize the country’s new rulers, the Taliban announced.
The announcement came at the conclusion of the first direct talks between former adversaries following the hasty withdrawal of American troops in late August.
The United States provided no comment on this weekend’s meeting.
The Taliban said the talks in Doha, Qatar “went well” and announced that Washington would provide humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, after clarifying that such assistance was not tied to formal recognition of the Taliban as a new force in Kabul.
Moreover, Washington was keen to emphasize that the talks were not a preamble to the recognition of the Taliban, who came to power on August 15 following the collapse of the US-backed Afghan government.
Taliban political spokesman Suhail Shahin told The Associated Press that the movement’s interim foreign minister assured the United States during negotiations that the Taliban are committed to ensuring that Afghan lands are not used by extremists to attack other countries.
However, this Saturday the Taliban refused to cooperate with Washington to curb the activities of the radical Islamic State (EI) group, which is increasingly active in Afghanistan.
IS, an enemy of the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for a string of recent attacks, including a suicide bombing this Friday that killed 46 minority Shia Muslims. Washington considers ISIS to be the biggest terrorist threat emanating from Afghanistan.
“We can confront Daesh alone [acrónimo árabe do movimento]”Shaheen said when asked if the Taliban would work with the United States to curb the Islamic State’s dependence on Afghanistan.
US officials were expected to pressure the Taliban to allow US citizens and others to leave Afghanistan.
In a statement released today, the Taliban said, without going into details, that “they will facilitate the movement of foreign citizens on a principled basis.”
