Foreign Desk Report
WASHINGTON: The US special representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad has come up with good news that Afghan government and Taliban have agreed to release prisoners from March 31. The US representative took to twitter to inform that the Afghan government and Taliban have reached consensus to start release of prisoners from March 31.
Zalmay Khalilzad termed the consensus a positive development while he informed further that second round of technical talks between Taliban and the Afghan government was held through a video conference.
He said that to make the procedure easy and simple further session of technical meetings will continue. Thousands of prisoners in Afghanistan could start being released by early next week, fulfilling a key condition of the nearly month-old U.S.-Taliban deal to bring peace to the country, government and Taliban officials said. The two sides agreed on the prisoner release Wednesday, days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. would cut $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan after he wasn’t able during a lightning visit to Kabul to resolve an impasse between President Ashraf Ghani and his political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, over who won last year’s presidential election.
