Religious movement has finalized its 20-member negotiating team, which includes 13 members of the Taliban\u2019s leadership council
\nnews agency
\nISLAMABAD
\nThe Taliban say they are ready for talks with Afghanistan\u2019s political leadership after the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha at the end of July, offering to hand over the last of the government prisoners in a week\u2019s time, providing the government frees the last of its Taliban prisoners.
\nThe offer made by Taliban\u2019s political spokesman Suhail Shaheen in a tweet late Thursday follows one of the most significant shakeups in the Taliban in years. The group appointed the son of the movement\u2019s fearsome founder to head its military wing and powerful leadership council members to its negotiation team.
\nIn Kabul on Friday, the High Council for National Reconciliation, which was created in May to manage peace efforts with the Taliban, said it was still working through the Taliban\u2019s prisoner list.
\nJaved Faisal, spokesman for the Afghan national security adviser\u2019s office, previously said nearly 600 Taliban prisoners whose release is being sought have been convicted of serious crimes. The government is reluctant to set them free, he said.
\nIt seemed unlikely the government would free the remaining Taliban prisoners before the Muslim holiday.
\nThe release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners held by the government and 1,000 government personnel and security officials in Taliban custody is laid out in a US deal with the Taliban aimed at ending Afghanistan\u2019s relentless wars.
\nAccording to the deal, the prisoner exchange is to take place ahead of talks between Kabul and the Taliban, seen as perhaps the most critical part of the deal.
\nShaheen\u2019s tweet was the first offer at a timeline for the negotiations, however he demanded the prisoner release be completed first and refused any substitutes to the list of prisoners submitted by the Taliban.
\nKabul has offered to free alternative Taliban members they have in custody and who they say have not been convicted of serious crimes. The Taliban have refused.
\nThe government\u2019s national reconciliation council membership has yet to be decided. It is being led by Abdullah Abdullah, a candidate in last year\u2019s presidential election who disputed the results and had for a time declared himself president. He was appointed to head the reconciliation efforts to break the political deadlock over the election, which had frustrated Washington\u2019s efforts to get intra-Afghan negotiations off the ground.
\nMeanwhile, in the Qatar capital of Doha, where the Taliban maintain a political office, the religious movement has finalized its 20-member negotiating team, which includes 13 members of the Taliban\u2019s leadership council.
\nTaliban officials who spoke previously said the strength of the team means it can make decisions on behalf of the movement.
\nThe Taliban team is also led by one of the founders of the movement, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who spent eight years in a jail in Pakistan after he attempted to open peace talks in 2010 with President Hamid Karzai.
\nBaradar\u2019s independent peace overtures were apparently made without either Pakistan\u2019s or the United States\u2019 prior approval, according to Karzai. Karzai has said he twice asked Islamabad and Washington to free Baradar. He was rejected both times, he said.
\nNow, however, Baradar speaks on the phone with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and was the leading negotiator in talks with US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, which resulted in a peace deal between the Taliban and the US It was touted as Afghanistan\u2019s best chance at peace in decades when it was signed Feb. 29. However, it has been bogged down over the release of prisoners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Religious movement has finalized its 20-member negotiating team, which includes 13 members of the Taliban\u2019s leadership council news agency ISLAMABAD The Taliban say they are ready for talks with Afghanistan\u2019s political leadership after the Muslim holiday of Eid Al-Adha at the end of July, offering to hand over the last of the government prisoners in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134654,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-134646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n