The United States and the Taliban will possibly ink an agreement by the end of this month, the group’s spokesman has reportedly said on Friday.
“The draft agreement is ready,” Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for Taliban’s political office, said as quoted by Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper.
“The only issue that needs to be sorted out is the ‘date’ to sign the peace agreement,” he said. “It’s now a matter of days. We are optimistic that we may be able to sign the agreement latest by this month’s end.”
Shaheen said that they had agreed to “scale down military operations in days leading up to the signing of the peace agreement with the United States.”
“The purpose (of scaling down) is to provide safe environment to foreign forces to withdraw from Afghanistan,” he added.
“There is no agreement on ceasefire,” Shaheen insisted. “It’s a reduction in our military operations,” he said. “It is our prerogative to see how, when and where to scale down our military operations and it’s not going to be restricted to foreign forces only. The scaling down will be blanket and shall include all forces including state forces.”
Meanwhile, envoys of US, EU, Germany, UN and NATO met in Dubai on Friday to discuss Afghanistan peace efforts.
They agreed that reduction of violence remains key to peace in Afghanistan, according to Germany’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Potzel Markus.
