Beijing to host ‘intra-Afghan’ conference: Taliban

China has invited a Taliban delegation to attend an
“intra-Afghan” conference in Beijing, a spokesman said Wednesday, after a
prospective deal between the US and the insurgents collapsed last month.
Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban political spokesman, said
on Twitter that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s co-founder, had met
with Chinese diplomats in Doha, where the group has a political office.
“Both sides discussed the upcoming intra-Afghan
conference in Beijing and issues related to the solution of Afghan problem,”
Shaheen wrote.
He later told AFP the conference would take place
October 29-30.
It would be separate from talks between the US and
the Taliban, which spent the past year negotiating a deal that would have seen
the Pentagon pull thousands of troops from Afghanistan in return for various
security guarantees.
President Donald Trump scrapped those talks last
month amid continued Taliban violence in Afghanistan, including a bombing that
killed an American soldier.
The deal would have paved the way for separate talks
between the Taliban and the Afghan government to search for an end to the
conflict.
The Taliban have steadfastly refused to talk to the
government, and Shaheen said any attendance by Afghan officials would be on the
understanding they were representing only themselves.
“All participants will attend in their personal
capacity and will present their personal point of view for the solution of the
Afghan problem,” Shaheen wrote on Twitter.
There was no immediate reaction from the
administration of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and Shaheen told AFP “it is
not yet clear” whether government officials would attend, noting only
lower-level officials should be included in the guest list.
Former president Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Mohammad
Yusuf Saha, told AFP that Karzai was “prepared to attend” but said no attendee
list had been finalized.
Beijing has previously hosted Taliban officials,
most recently last month.
China shares a 76-kilometre (47-mile) border with
the extreme northeastern tip of Afghanistan, in a mountainous area called the
Wakhan Corridor on the Afghan side.