Donald Trump has said he called off a planned Camp David meeting with Taliban and Afghan leaders after a Taliban suicide car bomb attack in Kabul killed 12 people.
“Unbeknownst to almost everyone,” the president tweeted, the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Taliban leaders were headed to the US for what would have been historic talks.
But “in order to build false leverage,” Mr Trump’s said, the Taliban admitted to a car bomb that exploded and killed an American solider and 11 others in a busy diplomatic area in Kabul.
“I immediately cancelled the meeting and called off peace negotiations,” he wrote.
The Defense Department confirmed Sgt. 1st Class Elis Barreto Ortiz, 34, from Morovis, Puerto Rico, became the fourth US solider to be killed in action in the past two weeks in Afghanistan.
Mr Trump added that if the Taliban could not hold to a cease-fire during the negotiations, “they probably don’t have the power” to negotiate a peace deal.
On Saturday night in Washington DC, the president’s account of events could not be immediately verified. And it was also unclear whether talks were just paused or entirely over.
Under the proposed accord reached “in principle” by the US and the Taliban, roughly 5,000 U.S. troops would withdraw from the country 135 days after the deal is signed.
The State Department and the White House declined to respond to requests for clarification.
The Telegraph
