PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has urged the Taliban to follow the recent example of an Afghan warlord and strike its own peace deal with the Kabul government, FRE/RL reports.
Speaking in Brussels at an international donors conference for Afghanistan on October 5, Kerry said that "there is a path toward an honorable end to the conflict that the Taliban have waged -- it is a conflict that cannot be won on the battlefield."
He said that a peace deal signed last week by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who heads the Hezb-e Islami group and was a key figure in Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s, was a "model for what might be possible."
Kerry added that a peace deal is the only way for the Taliban to end the fighting, ensure lasting stability, and "achieve a full drawdown of international military forces, which is their goal."
"Let me repeat it," he said. "The [Taliban's] goal of ridding Afghanistan of external forces will not occur by the demand or by the continued insurgency. It will come through peace."
Last week's agreement requires Hekmatyar to cease violence, cut all ties with international militant groups, and accept the Afgha...
Read full story