Afghanistan Times
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“If the Taliban ceases attacks, it will pave grounds for foreign troop pullout. A time will come that the Taliban and general public will tell foreign troops to leave as there is no war in the country, says HPC.”
AT Monitoring Desk-KABUL: The High Peace Council (HPC) said that to have peace in Afghanistan, the Taliban should put end to their war in Afghanistan. He argued that there will be no need for presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan, once the war was ended.
Qazi Amin Waqad, a senior member of the HPC, said that peace talks have not faced a total deadlock as despite an apparent deadlock still there are indirect contacts between the government and the Taliban insurgents. “Given that peace talks succeed, the people of Afghanistan and the Taliban will collectively demand the pullout of foreign troops,” Radio Azadi quoted Waqad as saying.
This comes at a time that the United States announced to keep 9,800 troops in Afghanistan through 2016. The US President Barack Obama declared that a peace deal on the part of the Taliban with the Afghan government is the only way for a complete withdrawal of American troops from the country. “Next week I will host Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan and I will continue to urge all parties in the region to press the Taliban to return to peace talks and to do their part in pursue to the peace that Afghans deserve,” he said.
Nawaz Sharif will pay a three-day official visit to the United States starting October 20.
Muhammad Yunus Fakoor, a political analyst, hoped that the stalled peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban will resume, if the Washington mounted political and economic pressures on Pakistan.
