MOSCOW, September 10. /TASS/. The Taliban movement (outlawed in Russia) may start combat actions if the United States ultimately refuses to carry out negotiations with the movement’s representatives on the settlement of the situation in Afghanistan, said spokesman for the Taliban movement Zabiullah Mujahid, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"We had two ways to end the occupation in Afghanistan, one was jihad and fighting, the other was talks and negotiations," the Taliban spokesman told AFP. "If Trump wants to stop talks, we will take the first way and they will soon regret it," he added.
On September 2, US Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad met with Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani and presented him a project of peaceful reconciliation reached between the Taliban and Washington’s administration. On Saturday, US President Donald Trump stated that he had cancelled meetings with the Taliban representatives and Ghani that were scheduled for September 8 and also refused to participate in negotiations on peaceful reconciliation with the Taliban after a terror attack on Kabul, which the movement’s supporters claimed responsibility for.
During the past year the US and the Taliban carried out eight rounds of negotiations at which they discussed the withdrawal of the army, ceasefire, the prospects of future inter-Afghan relations and the guarantees that Afghanistan will not become a ground for international terrorism. On August 24, the sides’ representatives reached an agreement on temporary parameters of the foreign forces’ withdrawal from Afghanistan’s territory during the ninth round of negotiations in Doha.