The US government has denied statements from the ranks of the radical Islamic Taliban about a withdrawal of half of American troops from Afghanistan until April. „We have not agreed a timetable for possible troop reductions,“ the State Department said in Washington today. It will not comment on the details of the negotiations with the Taliban over a political solution to the conflict.
The deputy head of the Taliban political office in Doha, Maulawi Abdul Salam Hanafi, said earlier on the sidelines of a conference in Moscow that US negotiators had agreed to withdraw half of the current 14,000 US troops by the end of April. The head of the delegation of the Taliban in Moscow, Scher Mohammed Abbas Stanaksai, however, did not want to make concrete statements on the subject, in contrast to Hanafi. According to him, the exact timetable will be discussed in later meetings with the Americans.
The US State Department said the US was not seeking a permanent military presence in Afghanistan. If the Taliban prevents Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorist organizations in the future, it is ready to consider changes in its troop presence. More than 18 years after the beginning of the international deployment in Afghanistan, the US is currently trying to resolve the bloody conflict through negotiations with the Taliban.
