NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday he welcomed talks between the United States and the Taliban.
It comes a day after US President Donald Trump, during a visit to Afghanistan, said that he had reopened talks with the Taliban.
“I welcome that there are contacts, talks between the United States and the Taliban,” Stoltenberg told a news conference before the NATO summit in London next Tuesday and Wednesday.
The meetings between US and Taliban come after Trump halted peace talks with the group in September, citing a deadly attack in Kabul.
In his speech at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, Trump said that now the Taliban “want to do a ceasefire.”
Stoltenberg said that the Taliban needs to make real compromises to achieve a credible deal.
“We think that the best way we can make sure that there is a credible deal, a real deal, is that we continue to support the Afghan security forces, sending a message to Taliban that we are ready to stay, we are committed, and they will not win on the battlefield,” Stoltenberg said. “They have to sit down at the negotiating table and make real compromises.”
He also said that “it’s extremely important that we avoid or prevent ISIS to establish themselves in Afghanistan, or to try to re-establish a kind of terrorist caliphate in Afghanistan, which they lost in the Levant.”
