US violating Doha deal, meddling in internal affairs: Taliban

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ANKARA (AA) – The Taliban have accused the US of violating terms of the Doha pact and “trying to meddle in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.”

Comments by Pentagon officials that some members of the interim government, including acting Interior Minister Sirajuddin Haqqani, “are on the US blacklists and still targets” are “neither in the interest of the US nor Afghanistan,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement on Thursday.

Haqqani, son of former Taliban leader and minister Jalaluddin Haqqani, still carries a $5 million bounty on his head announced by the US.

Mujahid asserted that the Haqqani family is part of the Taliban “and does not have a separate name or organizational setup.”

Under the February 2020 agreement signed in Doha by the Taliban and the US, all Taliban officials “without any exception … should have been removed from the UN and US blacklists, a demand which still remains valid,” he said.

The current US position is “a clear violation of the Doha Agreement which is neither in the interest of the US nor Afghanistan,” he added.

The Taliban condemn “in the strongest terms” the US and other countries for “making such provocative statements and trying to meddle the internal affairs of Afghanistan,” read the statement.

“Such remarks by US officials are a repetition of past failed experiments and such positions detrimental for America,” said the Taliban official.

“We urge that these incorrect policies be immediately reversed through diplomatic interactions.”