Kabul seeks closure of Taliban's Qatar office

Kabul has started discussions with the Qatari government to close the Talibans office in Doha as it has had "no positive consequence in terms of facilitating the peace talks with the group in Afghanistan", a senior government official has said.

"There is no need to keep the office open", said Mohammad Hanif Atmar, National Security Advisor to President Ashraf Ghani, in an interview with Middle East newspaper Ashraq Al-Awsat earlier this week.

"The aim behind opening (Taliban's) Qatar office was to start official peace negotiations with the terror group from the address, but so far no official negotiation from the office has been started with government. Even a single step has not been taken forward in the peace process through this office," Qadir Shah, a spokesman for Atmar's office said.

"It had no benefit for us even after seven years... It is better to close it," Atmar said.

He also said that Kabul has so far witnessed no sign of "sincere" cooperation from Islamabad in counter-terrorism efforts.

The Taliban had earlier reached out to the US with an offer for talks and urged people to pressurize Washington to bring an end to the invasion of Afghanistan.

The Taliban had said that they preferred to resolve the conflict that began in 2001 through peaceful dialogue and warned that the use of force alone would complicate the problem in Afghanistan.

The group had called on the "American people and the peace loving Congressmen" to pressurize US leadership to end the occupation of the Asian country, a precondition that Taliban has always maintained to begin any negotiation.

--IANS

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