Waiting for the Taliban leader to be on US soil for negotiations, Mr. Trump immediately canceled the meeting.
US President Donald Trump said on September 7 that Taliban leaders were on their way to the US for secret talks at Camp David, but the meeting was canceled by him.
According to CNN, Mr. Trump made the above statement after the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in Kabul, Afghanistan that killed at least 12 people, including US soldiers.
“Unknown to many, the Taliban leader and the President of Afghanistan secretly met with me at Camp David on September 8th,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Unfortunately, they accepted responsibility for the attack in Kabul that killed one of our great soldiers and 11 others,” Trump said. “I immediately canceled the meeting and called off peace talks.”
The US president criticized Taliban leaders, saying that the attack at a sensitive time could help increase their position at the negotiating table. “What kind of people want to kill more people to increase their negotiating position,” Mr. Trump said. “Not at all… They just make the situation worse.”
Mr Trump also referred to decades of war in Afghanistan and questioned whether the Taliban wanted to continue fighting for decades more. The US President's statement came after Washington and the Taliban were close to completing a historic peace deal.
The US negotiator, Afghanistan's special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, said this week that the US and the Taliban had essentially completed a peace deal, awaiting only Mr. Trump's approval. Under the agreement, the US will withdraw troops from five military bases in Afghanistan within 135 days, provided the Taliban also keeps its commitments.
In a series of statements on Twitter, Mr. Trump expressed his anger: “If they cannot cease fire in important peace negotiations, then perhaps they do not have the capacity to negotiate,” Mr. Trump wrote.
