U.S. to undertake a review of a deal with Taliban

 

MONITORING (SW) – President-elect Joe Biden’s pick for his top diplomat said Tuesday he would undertake a review of a deal with Afghanistan’s Taliban and believed the United States needed means to prevent any resurgence of terrorism.

“We want to end this so-called forever war. We want to bring our forces home. We want to retain some capacity to deal with any resurgence of terrorism, which is what brought us there in the first place,” Antony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, told his Senate confirmation hearing.

“We have to look carefully at what has actually been negotiated. I haven’t been privy to it yet.”

According to a report by the AFP, in the accord signed in Doha, the United States said it would withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by May 2021 and the Taliban pledged not to allow extremists to operate from Afghanistan, although the group continued attacks on government forces. The removal of Al-Qaeda was the original reason for the US invasion following the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But the agreement came with annexes that remain classified, leading to criticism in the United States that there were secret understandings with the Taliban, it added.

On its way out, the Trump administration said Friday it had reduced troop levels to just 2,500, the lowest in decades.

The AFP report stated that Biden was an early advocate of ending the war in Afghanistan but his aides have more recently spoken of the need for a small force to counter outbreaks of violence — a stance unlikely to be stomached by the Taliban.

ENDS

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