The Taliban has walked away from a week's worth of “fruitless” peace talks in Kabul after the Afghan government refused to abide by an earlier agreement and release 5,000 Taliban prisoners. The news comes just a day after the militant group blasted Washington for not respecting their peace agreement.
‘We Cannot Release Killers of Our People'
The Taliban militant group announced on Monday it would no longer participate in discussions with the Afghan government negotiating the release of prisoners as a precondition for peace talks. Delegates from the two parties have been meeting in the Afghan capital of Kabul for a week, trying to hammer out the deal.
“We sent a technical team of the Prisoner's Commission to Kabul for verification and identification of our prisoners as release of prisoners was to start, as per the signed agreement and the promise made [to us],” Taliban political spokesperson Suhail Shaheen tweeted on Monday.
Matin Bek, a member of the Afghan government's negotiating team, told Agence France-Presse that the release had been delayed because the government did not want to include 15 of the Taliban's “top commanders” in the release.
“We cannot release the killers of our people,” Bek, who heads the Independent Directorate of Local Governance, told reporters on Monday. “We don't want them to go back to the battlefield and capture a whole province.”
The minister did say the government was willing to release as many as 400 low-threat…
