KABUL: Taliban and Afghan government forces clashed across Afghanistan hours after the start of long-awaited peace talks in Doha on Saturday, officials said, underscoring the uphill challenge of settling a 19-year insurgency. Talks between the two sides were to begin shortly after a US-Taliban agreement in February, but began only over the weekend after months of delays, caused in part by continuing Taliban offensives in the war-torn country.
“With the start of intra-Afghan talks we were expecting the Taliban to reduce the number of their attacks, but unfortunately their attacks are still going in high numbers,” Fawad Aman, a spokesman for the Afghan defense ministry, said.
Representatives from a number of countries who spoke at the inauguration of the peace talks called on the Taliban to announce an immediate cease-fire before negotiators sat down to find a way to end decades of war in Afghanistan.
The Taliban did not say anything about a possible cease-fire at the ceremony.
Achieving a significant reduction in violence and how to get to a permanent cease-fire would be among the first issues the sides would discuss when they meet on Sunday, the head of Afghanistan’s peace council, Abdullah Abdullah, told Reuters on Saturday.
No meeting between the two has been reported by either side in Doha on Sunday, but Qatar’s state news agency reported teams led by Taliban’s political chief Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and Abdullah had met the Qatari Emir.
Aman said that, on Friday, the eve of the inauguration of the talks, the Taliban had carried out 18 attacks against government forces and installations across the country, inflicting heavy casualties.
“We don’t have exact information about Taliban attacks on Saturday, but I can say the number of attacks has increased instead of decreased.”
Taliban attacks on Saturday night were confirmed by officials in the provinces of Kapsia and Kunduz.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement that the insurgent group attacked a convoy of Afghan forces that had arrived to launch an operation along a key highway in Kunduz.
He added that security forces carried out air and artillery strikes on Saturday night in the provinces of Baghlan and Jowzjan.
Afghan forces, Taliban continue to clash even as peace talks start
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Afghan forces, Taliban continue to clash even as peace talks start
- ‘With the start of intra-Afghan talks we were expecting the Taliban to reduce the number of their attacks, but unfortunately their attacks are still going in high numbers’
Trump says US could run Venezuela and its oil for years
- US president made the comments less than a week after Washington seized Maduro in a raid on Caracus
- Oil has emerged as the key to US control over Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven reserves
WASHINGTON: The United States could run Venezuela and tap into its oil reserves for years, President Donald Trump said in an interview published Thursday, less than a week after toppling its leader Nicolas Maduro.
“Only time will tell” how long Washington would demand direct oversight of the South American country, Trump told The New York Times.
But when asked whether that meant three months, six months or a year, he replied: “I would say much longer.”
The 79-year-old US leader also said he wanted to travel to Venezuela eventually. “I think at some point it’ll be safe,” he said.
US special forces snatched president Maduro and his wife in a lightning raid on Saturday and whisked them to New York to face trial on drug and weapons charges, underscoring what Trump has called the “Donroe Doctrine” of US hegemony over its backyard.
Since then Trump has repeatedly asserted that the United States will “run” Venezuela, despite the fact that it has no boots on the ground.
Venezuela’s interim leader Delcy Rodriguez insisted that no foreign power was governing her country. “There is a stain on our relations such as had never occurred in our history,” Rodriguez said of the US attack.
But she added it was “not unusual or irregular” to trade with the United States now, following an announcement by state oil firm PDVSA that it was in negotiations to sell crude to the United States.
‘Tangled mess’
Oil has in fact emerged as the key to US control over Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven reserves.
Trump announced a plan earlier this week for the United States to sell between 30 million and 50 million barrels of Venezuelan crude, with Caracas then using the money to buy US-made products.
On the streets of Caracas, opinions remain mixed about the oil plan.
“I feel we’ll have more opportunities if the oil is in the hands of the United States than in the hands of the government,” said Jose Antonio Blanco, 26. “The decisions they’ll make are better.”
Teresa Gonzalez, 52, said she didn’t know if the oil sales plan was good or bad.
“It’s a tangled mess. What we do is try to survive, if we don’t work, we don’t eat,” she added.
Trump, who will meet oil executives on Friday, is also considering a plan for the US to exert some control over Venezuela’s PDVSA, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The US would then have a hand in controlling most of the oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, as Trump aims to drive oil prices down to $50 a barrel, the paper reported.
Vice President JD Vance underscored that “the way that we control Venezuela is we control the purse strings.”
“We tell the regime, ‘you’re allowed to sell the oil so long as you serve America’s national interest,’” he told Fox News host Jesse Watters in an interview broadcast late Wednesday.
‘Go like Maduro’
Vance, an Iraq veteran who is himself a skeptic of US military adventures, also addressed concerns from Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” saying the plan would exert pressure “without wasting a single American life.”
The US Senate is voting Thursday on a “war powers” resolution to require congressional authorization for military force against Venezuela, a test of Republican support for Trump’s actions.
Caracas announced on Wednesday that at least 100 people had been killed in the US attack and a similar number wounded. Havana says 32 Cuban soldiers were among them.
Trump’s administration has so far indicated it intends to stick with Rodriguez and sideline opposition figures, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado.
But Rodriguez’s leadership faces internal pressures, analysts have told AFP, notably from her powerful Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.
“Her power comes from Washington, not from the internal structure. If Trump decides she’s no longer useful, she’ll go like Maduro,” Venezuela’s former information minister Andres Izarra told AFP in an email.
The US operation in Venezuela — and Trump’s hints that other countries could be next — spread shockwaves through the Americas, but but he has since dialed down tensions with Colombia.
A day after Colombia’s leftist President Gustavo Petro spoke with Trump on Wednedsday, Bogota said Thursday it had agreed to take “joint action” against cocaine-smuggling guerrillas on the border with Venezuela.
