China urges US to continue to engage with Taliban after talks in Beijing as conflict continues in Afghanistan
- Beijing says it remains committed to peace process in Afghanistan and will ‘play constructive role’, after delegation meets special Chinese representative
- It comes after US President Donald Trump called off negotiations with insurgent group earlier this month
China on Monday called on Washington to continue to engage with the Taliban following talks with the insurgent group in Beijing, after negotiations with the US collapsed earlier this month.
A nine-member Taliban delegation travelled to the Chinese capital and met the country’s special representative for Afghanistan, Deng Xijun, on Sunday, the group’s Qatar-based spokesman Suhail Shaheen said in a tweet.
“The Chinese side has paid keen attention to the situation in Afghanistan and remains committed to pushing forward the Afghan peace process, and has maintained communication with all relevant parties in Afghanistan,” Geng said during a regular press briefing.
Geng also said Beijing hoped the United States could maintain the momentum of negotiations with the Taliban, and that it would continue to “play a constructive role” in the peace process.
The meeting came after US President Donald Trump called off negotiations between US officials and the Taliban, which controls large parts of Afghanistan, on September 7, and said the talks were “dead”.
There had been hopes that the months of talks between US diplomats and the Taliban would pave the way for a broader peace deal with the Afghan government and end a 17-year war.
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Trump’s decision came after the Taliban admitted to a car bombing at a security post near Nato’s Resolute Support mission headquarters in Kabul that killed 12 people, including two Nato soldiers – one American and one Romanian.
A Taliban delegation also visited Beijing in June, when China said that it supported Afghans to resolve the crisis through dialogue and that the visit was an important part of China promoting the peace talks.
China, which is a close ally of Pakistan, has sought to deepen its economic and political ties with Kabul and is also using its influence to try to bring the two uneasy neighbours closer.
“The Chinese special representative said the US-Taliban deal is a good framework for the peaceful solution of the Afghan issue and they support it,” Shaheen said.
Shaheen also quoted Mullah Baradar, the Taliban delegation’s leader, as saying that “if the US president cannot stay committed to his words and breaks his promise, then he is responsible for any kind of distraction and bloodshed in Afghanistan”.
With an election looming on Saturday, President Ashraf Ghani is hoping to be returned to power and in a better position to negotiate peace with the Taliban – but the fundamentalist group has threatened to carry out more attacks to drive away voters.
The polls have gained importance since the collapse of the peace talks, as the negotiations could have led to the creation of an interim government, which is now a more distant prospect.
China’s far western Xinjiang region – home to mostly Turkic-speaking Muslim Uygurs – shares a short border with Afghanistan, and Beijing has long worried about links between militant groups and what it calls Islamist extremists in Xinjiang.
