May 02 (The Killid Group) — The United States special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has called on the Afghan government and the Taliban to accelerate the process of prisoner release and reduce the violence as part of the efforts to start the intra-Afghan peace talks and move toward a permanent ceasefire.
Referring to UNAMA’s civilian casualties report through the first quarter of the ongoing year, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, took to Twitter saying the Taliban’s dead-dealing assaults have been ramping up—an act responded violently by the Afghan National Security and Defense Forces (ANDSF).
Dr. Khalilzad was confident the result of the continued violence would be an “escalatory cycle” which is a “negative trend.”
“This violence has generated a violent response from the ANDSF. The result is an escalatory cycle which is complex but inarguably a negative trend that must be reversed,” the U.S. envoy continued his Twitter thread.
The U.S. envoy appealed to the Afghan government and the armed Taliban to accelerate the process of prisoner release as well as to end the ongoing violence as means of starting the intra-Afghan negotiations and a “comprehensive permanent” truce.
“Both the Taliban and the government need to accelerate efforts to release prisoners and lower violence, which is the fastest means to intra-Afghan negotiations and a comprehensive permanent ceasefire,” he tweeted.
Ambassador Khalilzad further added in his tweet that a delay in the process of prisoner release and ending the violence leads to more “civilian losses”— the focus of attention must be to fight COVID-19, he added.
The United States envoy’s remarks on Twitter came after the Taliban released an additional 12 inmates of the Afghan government in the northern Kunduz province in an attempt to save lives of the prisoners from the risk of coronavirus, according to a group’s spokesman, Suhail Shaheen.
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