Trump cancels peace talks with the Taliban | Univision United States News

The Taliban "admitted an attack in Kabul that killed one of our great great soldiers and 11 other people," Trump tweeted, lamenting that attempt, he said, "to try to gain a false advantage" in the negotiations.

It was the second attack of the insurgents in a few days in the Afghan capital, despite the "agreement of principle" that the US negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, claimed to have closed with them during negotiations in Doha and presented to the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, earlier this week.

"What kind of people kill so many people to achieve an apparent improvement in their position in the negotiations? They have failed, they have only made things worse!" Trump tweeted.

"If they are unable to accept a ceasefire during such important peace negotiations, and are even willing to kill 12 innocents, they probably do not have the capacity to negotiate a meaningful agreement. How many decades do they want to continue fighting?", the US president added.

The Trump administration began direct and unpublished negotiations with the Taliban a year ago, to which US forces had expelled from power in the military intervention initiated following the attacks perpetrated by the jihadist group Al Qaeda on September 11, 2001.

Washington was about to close an agreement to allow the progressive withdrawal of the nearly 13,000 US troops deployed in Afghanistan, in exchange for Taliban guarantees of "violence reduction" and the launch of negotiations on direct peace with the government of Kabul, a condition that the insurgents had always rejected so far.

Despite US optimism, the Afghan government had expressed its "concern" about the draft agreement this week and requested clarification from Zalmay Khalilzad,
who returned to Doha on Thursday to resume talks with the Taliban.

The head of US diplomacy, Mike Pompeo, hoped to reach an agreement before September 1 so that inter-Afghan negotiations could begin before the presidential elections scheduled on September 28 in Afghanistan.

And Trump, who believes that the Afghan conflict has already cost his country too much money and lives, has repeatedly insisted on his willingness to withdraw US troops before trying to be re-elected in November 2020.

A part of the observers and members of the American political class feared that, due to the president's rush, a "bad agreement" would be signed, despite the consensus on the need to withdraw soldiers from Afghanistan.

But the Republican president said "no" this Saturday, as he had resigned in February to sign an agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the denuclearization of North Korea.