Taliban refusals to cut violence and sever links with al-Qaeda are jeopardising America’s agreement to pull troops out of Afghanistan this spring, the Pentagon has warned.
The militants failure to keeping promises made in the Doha withdrawal deal is undermining chances of a peace deal, officials said.
The comments from America’s defence department came days after Joe Biden’s new administration said it would review the troubled Doha deal amid few signs of progress and unrelenting violence.
A spokesman for the Taliban immediately rejected the accusation that the insurgent movement was not keeping its end of the deal.
American troop numbers in Afghanistan have fallen to just 2,500, bringing the deployment in America’s longest war to its lowest since the 2001 invasion to topple the Taliban and seek out Osama bin Laden.
The February 29 deal saw America agree to withdraw troops by May 2021 if the Taliban kept promises to prevent international terrorist groups using Afghan soil to launch attacks.
American officials have also said the deal included an understanding violence would be cut, though no such guarantees appear in the public agreement.
But US and UN intelligence assessments have warned of close remaining links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, while the group has been blamed for a wave of assassinations.
John Kirby, Pentagon chief spokesman, said: "Without them meeting their commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks against the Afghan national security forces, it’s very hard to see a specific way forward for the negotiated settlement. But we’re still committed to that."
The White House said Mr Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told his Afghan counterpart in a phone call last Friday that the new administration will "review" the deal. Antony Blinken, the newly installed secretary of state said on Wednesday the administration wanted to take a detailed look to "understand exactly what is in the agreement" before deciding how to proceed.
The review has raised hope in Ashraf Ghani’s beleaguered Afghan government that Mr Biden will rethink a deal which many in Kabul see as giving too much away to the Taliban. Yet Mr Biden has long been sceptical of the US military mission in Afghanistan and last year said the US would bear no responsibility if the Taliban regained power after troops left.
"The Taliban are not meeting their commitments to reduce violence and reduce their ties to al-Qaeda," Mr Kirby told reporters. “As long as they’re not meeting their commitments, it’s going to be difficult for anybody at that negotiating table to meet their commitments.
“In fact it wouldn’t be the wise course. We obviously are still committed to ending this war, but we want to do it in a responsible way."
Свежие комментарии