President Trump said he canceled secret peace talks with the Taliban after the group was credited for a car bomb that killed two NATO and American service members in Kabul last week.
The president made the announcement Saturday on Twitter, saying that “major” Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani were going to “secretly” meet with him at Camp David, which is located in Maryland, on Sunday.
Unbeknownst to almost everyone, the major Taliban leaders and, separately, the President of Afghanistan, were going to secretly meet with me at Camp David on Sunday. They were coming to the United States tonight. Unfortunately, in order to build false leverage, they admitted to..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019
….only made it worse! If they cannot agree to a ceasefire during these very important peace talks, and would even kill 12 innocent people, then they probably don’t have the power to negotiate a meaningful agreement anyway. How many more decades are they willing to fight?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019
The attack at a checkpoint near NATO headquarters and the United States embassy in Kabul took place on Thursday. At least 12 people were killed, including one service member who was American and another who was Romanian.
On Friday, the Department of Defense identified the American soldier as Sgt. 1st Class Elis Angel Barreto Ortiz, a 34-year-old paratrooper from Morovis, Puerto Rico.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and asserted that they were targeting “foreign occupiers.”
The deadly blast came soon after a tentative U.S.-Taliban peace deal was reached. Zalmay Khalilzad, the top U.S. negotiator involved in the peace talks, said on Monday an agreement had been reached “in principle” but noted it would not be final “until the president of the United States also agrees to it.”
Under the draft deal, the U.S. would shut down five military bases and remove 5,400 soldiers from Afghanistan within five months.
Afghan officials, who had been barred from the talks, were uneasy about the tentative plan, arguing it could loosen the government’s hold on the region.
