KABUL (SW) – Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, has clarified no troop withdrawal timetable exists.
“In recent days, I’ve heard some individual Taliban officials claim we have a troop withdrawal timetable for Afghanistan. Today, they correctly retracted that claim”, he said in a tweet here on Thursday.
This came as Abdul Salam Hanafi, a member of the Taliban delegation in Moscow conference, claimed the US has promised to take out half of its troops from Afghanistan by April.
Moscow hosted the two-day conference among the Taliban and a number of Afghan officials snubbing the Kabul government. The conference concluded with a joint statement that also called for the withdrawal of the foreign troops from Afghanistan.
The Afghan government was not presented in this conference, and Shah Hussain Murtazavi, deputy spokesman for President Ashraf Ghani, has dubbed it as a meeting between the Taliban and the ‘team of Haneet Atmar’.
ENDS
