President Ashraf Ghani met with US acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller at the Presidential Palace in Kabul on Tuesday afternoon, the Palace said.
In the meeting, President Ghani said the Afghan govt has taken practical steps for peace and that the other side should also show its clear intentions in this respect, the Presidential Palace said.
The Presidential Palace’s spokesman Sediq Sediqqi in a tweet said that President Ghani and Miller discussed the Afghan peace process, the security situation in Afghanistan and in the region, and the continued support for Afghan forces.
Miller’s trip comes as American troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan after US President Donald Trump last month ordered the number of US forces to be approximately halved to 2,500 by January 15, five days before he leaves office.
The US and Taliban have signed an agreement in Doha, Qatar, in February this year that would see the withdrawal of all US forces from Afghanistan by May 2021 if the Taliban met certain conditions including a reduction in violence leading to a ceasefire and peace talks with the Afghan government.
Last week, Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, held unannounced talks with the Taliban peace negotiators in Doha, capital of Qatar, to urge a reduction in violence across Afghanistan, the AP reported.
Gen. Milley met for about two hours with the Taliban negotiators before he flew to Kabul to discuss the peace process with President Ghani, the report said.
“The most important part of the discussions that I had with both the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan was the need for an immediate reduction in violence,” Milley told three reporters, including one from the AP, who accompanied him to Qatar and Afghanistan. “Everything else hinges on that.”
Under ground rules set by Milley for security reasons, the journalists traveling with him agreed not to report on either set of talks until he had departed the region, according to the report.
It was Milley’s second unannounced meeting with the Taliban’s negotiating team; the first, in June, also in Doha, had not been reported until now, said the AP.
In Kabul, Milley met President Ghani and “Both sides expressed their concerns over the escalation of violence in Afghanistan and discussed the Afghan peace process and the immediate need for a ceasefire,” Presidential Palace said.
