Peace talks will fail if the Taliban don’t agree to ceasefire, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s spokesman warned on Saturday.
The United States has resumed talks with the Taliban in Qatari capital Doha and Kabul’s comments come a day after a Taliban spokesman reportedly said that the draft agreement with US was ready and that the group had agreed to reduce attacks in the days leading up to the signing of the deal.
“Ceasefire is the demand of Afghan people, it is the only solution, we cannot achieve sustainable peace without it,” Afghan presidential spokesman, Sediq Sediqi, said at a press conference.
He said that reduction of violence was not practical.
“For the Afghan people, reduction of violence is an ambiguous issue, if I explain, it would mean there would not be 10, but 5 attacks daily,” he said.
He said that “no significant progress” was made in ongoing talks between the US and the Taliban.
Earlier on Friday, US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad met with envoys of UN, EU, NATO and Germany to discuss Afghan peace efforts.
Germany’s special representative for Afghanistan, Markus Potzel said that they agreed that reduction of violence remains key.