US doing all it can to ensure Kabul-Taliban negotiations: Pompeo

KABUL moves forward.

Testifying before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the secretary acknowledged a deep level of distrust with the Taliban and other actors.

“We understand there is not only a deep level of distrust with the Taliban, there is a deep level of distrust with many of the actors … It’s a nation that has a sad history with respect to truth-telling and corruption. 

While pursuing an agreement on reconciliation and roping in violence, the US would remain careful, Pompeo said in response to a query from Senator Rand Paul.

The senator called the US mission in Afghanistan a mess, nation building at its worst, complaining that Washington was wasting $50 billion every year in that country. 

For his part, the secretary said the negotiations would have a framework, but actions on the ground would ultimately come to deliver the confidence that was needed to cut the enormous resource commitment and risk to American soldiers.

He insisted the US was talking to the Afghan government, the Taliban on how to achieve a peace deal. “We think we’re closer than we have been at any time in the last decade in achieving that.  This will ultimately be a resolution that the Afghan people will have to achieve.”

The US was talking to the Taliban because they controlled a significant amount of resources. In order to realise the goal of reconciliation and rein in the violence level, he argued, the Taliban were going to have a say in that.

Asked what was being done to ensure Afghan women were at the table during the negotiations, he replied some real progress had been made with respect to how women were treated in parts of Afghanistan.

“We want to do everything we can to make sure that as Afghanistan moves forward, we don’t retrograde, we don’t go backwards on that,” remarked Pompeo, who reiterated women should be part of the discussion.  

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