<\/p>\n
Washington, July 16 (TNS): Senior US officials have been in Pakistan and Afghanistan recently and held talks with major players in both countries in preparation for direct talks with Taliban, according to American media.<\/p>\n
A report in a leading US newspaper \u201cThe New York Times\u201d says President Donald Trump has instructed \u201ctop diplomats\u201d to pursue \u201cdirect talks\u201d with the Taliban in an effort to \u201cjump-start\u201d negotiations with the militant group in the hope of bringing an end to the 17-year war in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
The New York Times said Sunday the move represents a \u201csignificant shift in American policy in Afghanistan\u201d.<\/p>\n
The move has been confirmed by \u201cseveral senior American and Afghan officials,\u201d according to the newspaper.<\/p>\n
The report said there is a growing \u201cconsensus\u201d among American and Afghan officials that the only way to \u201cfire up a peace process\u201d and come to an agreement on an exit strategy for the war \u201cis for the United States to take a more direct role in negotiations\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Taliban has often insisted that it will only talk with the United States and its NATO allies about ending the fighting, calling the Afghan government a puppet of the West.<\/p>\n
The Times said no date has been set for the talks and peace efforts could still be derailed, but the shift in US strategy exposes the \u201csense of urgency\u201d the Trump administration feels \u201cto break the stalemate in Afghanistan\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, July 16 (TNS): Senior US officials have been in Pakistan and Afghanistan recently and held talks with major players in both countries in preparation for direct talks with Taliban, according to American media. A report in a leading US newspaper \u201cThe New York Times\u201d says President Donald Trump has instructed \u201ctop diplomats\u201d to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":71813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71810"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71814,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71810\/revisions\/71814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/71813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tns.world\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}