US President Donald Trump said he spoke with a leader of the Taliban on Tuesday and they have a good conversation.
“I spoke to the leader of the Taliban today. We have a good conversation. We have agreed that there is no violence. We don’t want violence. We will see what happens. They are dealing with Afghanistan. But we will see what happens,” Trump told reporters at the White House.
The phone call between Trump and Taliban deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar came days after the US signed a peace agreement with the Taliban.
The deal came following days of reduction in violence, but the group has announced resumption of its normal offensive against Afghan forces.
In a statement, the Taliban said Baradar spoke to Trump for 35 minutes, and told him to stand firm in his commitment to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan.
According to the statement, Trump told the Taliban leader that the Afghan people were strong and that the US withdrawal would be good for all involved.
The Taliban said Trump assured Baradar that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would speak to Ghani to remove hurdles to the so-called intra-Afghan talks.
A statement from the White House said that Trump “emphasized the need to continue the reduction in violence” and “urged the Taliban to participate in intra-Afghan negotiations,” the White House said in a statement. The United States, the statement continued, “stands ready to continue its support for the Afghan people as they pursue a peace settlement.”
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has rejected the clause of the US-Taliban deal that requires release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners in return for 1,000 prisoners held by the group.
“Well, they may be reluctant. You know, they’ve been — they’ve done very well with the United States for many years, far beyond military, if you look at all the money that we’ve spent in Afghanistan. We’ve spent trillions of dollars. Trillions of dollars,” Trump said in a roundtable briefing in Maryland.
“And we’re really a police force. We’re really not fighting, per se. It’s a fight that, if we had to, we’d win. But I don’t want to kill millions of people. We would win it fairly quickly, but I don’t want to kill millions of people. I think it’s crazy. And so we’ve been there — we’ll be very — very soon, it’ll be 20 years.”
“And I said, right from the beginning, not easy to get out of these conflicts. Very complex in terms of all of the people you have to deal with, including, frankly, people in the Senate, people in the House. And a lot of people feel differently about things. But I’ve been amazed at how positive the response is to getting out of Afghanistan and to moving on. And I really had a great conversation with him today.”
Trump said that “the relationship is very good that I have with the mullah.”
“And, you know, they want to cease the violence. They’d like to cease violence also,” Trump said.
