Trump:

US Will Come Back to Afghanistan in Force ‘If Bad Things Happen’

After signing an accord on Saturday that envisages a timetable for the US to withdraw some 13,000 troops from Afghanistan, US President Donald Trump added that his administration would redeploy its military to the nation "If bad things happen".

News ID: 449383

Date: 02 March 2020 - 09:52

RNA - Trump hailed the deal during a White House press conference and said that he would personally meet with Taliban leaders "in the not so distant future", RIA Novosti reported.

Trump predicted that the forthcoming talks between the Afghan sides would be successful as "everyone is tired of war", although many expect the negotiations be more complicated than the initial deal.

The US president also declared that the Taliban must take care of the terrorists, and "kill" them.

The president called on neighboring countries to help maintain stability in Afghanistan, following an agreement which suggests a full withdrawal of all foreign troops from the nation, including US forces.

The troop withdrawal will be phased, with the US forces set to be slimmed down to 8,600 in the first 135 days since the deal's announcement, while allied and coalition forces will be scaled down proportionately.

The residual US, allied and coalition forces will pull out within the remaining nine-and-a-half months, whereby all military bases will be abandoned.

According to the deal, up to 5000 Taliban prisoners will be released from prisons by March 10, the first day of intra-Afghan talks, while the remaining prisoners will be freed within the next three months. The Taliban commits that its released prisoners will not pose a threat to the security of the US and its allies.

Since 2018, Washington and the Taliban have been attempting to negotiate a peace deal that would ensure the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan in exchange for the movement's guarantee that the country would not become a safe haven for terrorists. The parties' representatives have been regularly meeting in Doha to address the issue.

Pakistan has urged the US to pull its troops out of Afghanistan in a responsible fashion, after Trump said that the expected peace deal with the Taliban may bring American soldiers home.

“We want a responsible withdrawal,” Shah Mahmood Qureshi told Reuters in Qatar’s capital Doha, where US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was set to oversee the signing of a peace deal with the Taliban on Saturday.

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