MOSCOW: The Afghan government and the Taliban agreed on Friday to try to accelerate peace talks, at a meeting in Moscow that followed an international conference there on the peace process, a senior Afghan official was quoted as saying. “We expressed our readiness to accelerate the (peace) process,” Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, told Russia’s RIA news agency. “They (the Taliban) did as well.”Abdullah said the sides had not discussed any specific issues when they met in Moscow on Friday. The United States sent a senior representative to Moscow for the talks on Afghanistan. Washington agreed last year with the Taliban to withdraw its troops by May 1 after nearly two decades, and is looking for support among regional powers for its plans for the peace process.

Source: Pakistan Today March 19, 2021 17:47 UTC