A six-member Afghan government team has left for Qatar where they will meet Taliban members after the militant groups sign the long-awaited peace deal with the US on Saturday in Doha, according to the sources.
In a statement on Thursday, the Presidential Palace called the team “a group to establish initial contacts” with the Taliban and they were meeting with the militant group at their request and also of the US, TOLO News reported.
This meeting will be the first between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Part of the US-Taliban agreement was the release of 5,000 prisoners, about which the Washington government wanted a meeting between the militant and representatives of the Afghan government, the sources said on Thursday.
According to the sources, India’s Ambassador to Qatar will also attend the signing of the landmark peace deal between the US and the Afghan Taliban in Doha.
Sources said India has been invited by the Qatar government for the ceremony where the deal will be signed and Indian ambassador P Kumaran will attend it. It will be for the first time India will officially attend an event involving the Taliban.
More than 10,000 civilians were killed or wounded in Afghanistan’s war last year, the United Nations announced Saturday, as a historic partial truce kicked in across the country. India did not recognise Afghanistan diplomatically when Taliban was ruling the country from 1996 to 2002.
Last year, in September, Zalmay Khalilzad, Washington’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation had said that the US and Taliban are “at the threshold of an agreement” that would reduce violence and open the door for Afghans to sit together and negotiate.
On December 19, Khalilzad also said that the US and Taliban were approaching an important stage in the Afghan peace process.
But US President Donald Trump called an abrupt halt to the process after an American was killed in a Taliban attack in Kabul
The draft agreement ensured that over 5,000 US troops will withdraw from five American bases in the first 135 days after the signing of the deal.
Since the end of the NATO combat mission in January 2015, the US maintains one contingent within the framework of the new allied mission of advising Afghan troops and another for “anti-terrorist” operations.