President Donald Trump made an unannounced visit to US troops in Afghanistan – his first time in the country – for the Thanksgiving holiday.
During the brief appearance at Bagram Airfield, Mr Trump served turkey to soldiers, posed for photographs, and met Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.
In a speech to troops, Mr Trump said the US was in talks with the Taliban, which he said “wants to make a deal”.
Mr Trump also said the US was “substantially” reducing troop numbers.
Some 13,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan 18 years after the US intervention to oust the Taliban following the 11 September 2001 attacks.
The visit comes after a prisoner swap with the Taliban aimed at resuming peace negotiations.
Earlier this month, the Taliban freed two Western academics who had been held hostage since 2016 – American Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks – in exchange for three imprisoned senior militants.
“We’re meeting with them [Taliban] and we say it has to be a ceasefire and they didn’t want to do a ceasefire and now they want to do a ceasefire,” Mr Trump said at the base near the capital, Kabul. “I believe it will probably work out that way.”
It is not clear how substantive the talks have been.
Afghan officials have long demanded a ceasefire but the Taliban, who now control more territory than at any point since they were ousted in 2001, have refused to hold direct talks with the government until a US deal is agreed.
Taliban leaders confirmed that meetings with senior US officials were being held in Doha since last weekend but that formal talks had not yet resumed, Reuters news agency reported.
Mr Trump also reaffirmed his plan to cut troop levels to about 8,600 but did not say how many personnel would leave or when. “We’re going to stay until such time as we have a deal or we have total victory, and they want to make a deal very badly.”
Source:bbc.com
