US envoy: Afghan Taliban seeks 'lion's share of power' in stalemated talks

The Taliban and the Kabul government are far apart in US-backed talks on bringing peace to Afghanistan, with the insurgents demanding "the lion's share of power" in any new government, the special US envoy said.

Afghan-born veteran US diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad's bleak assessment of the peace process coincides on Tuesday with Taliban advances on provincial capitals that have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians as the US troop pullout nears completion after 20 years of war.

"At this point, they (the Taliban) are demanding that they take the lion's share of power in the next government given the military situation as they see it," Khalilzad told the Aspen Security Forum in an online conference.

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Taliban could become 'international pariahs'

The deadlocked negotiations in Doha were the subject of a telephone call on Tuesday between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, with them agreeing on the need accelerate talks, the US State Department said.

Blinken and Ghani also "condemned the ongoing Taliban attacks and displacement of the civilian population," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

The Taliban's rapid advances have fuelled fears that the insurgents aim to re-establish by force their harsh brand of Islamist rule ended by the 2001 US-led invasion, including the repression of women and the independent media.

The insurgents say they want a peace deal.

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Kabul blast 

A car bomb blast followed by sporadic gunfire hit Kabul on Tuesday near the heavily fortified "Green Zone," leaving three civilians and three attackers dead.

Khalilzad was the architect of the US-Taliban deal for a US troop pullout reached in February 2020.

In his rare public assessment of the Doha talks started under that deal, Khalilzad said peace can only be reached through a ceasefire and negotiations that would establish a transitional government.

Ghani's administration says the talks should focus on "bringing the Taliban into the current government," he said.

The Taliban contends that Ghani's government "is the result of military occupation" and they want an agreement on a transitional government and constitution, Khalilzad continued.

"They are far apart," he said. "They are trying to affect each other's calculus and the terms by what they are doing on the battlefield."

Khalilzad said that 40 years of continuous conflict "has no legitimacy any more."

"It's a struggle for a balance of power, dispensation of power between various factions, and no Afghans, especially civilian Afghans, should die because of that," he added in remarks that risked angering the US-backed Ghani government.

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US says civil war one of many concerns

Meanwhile, the United States said on Tuesday that one of many concerns about Afghanistan is that it could spiral into civil war.

Since the United States announced plans in April to withdraw its troops with no conditions by September 11 after nearly 20 years of conflict, violence has escalated throughout the country as the Taliban seeks more territory.

Peace talks between the Afghan government and Taliban negotiators started last year in the Qatari capital of Doha, but have not made any substantive progress.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the Taliban saw "the utility of a negotiated solution, they are engaged in Doha."

"If they seek to contravene what they have said, then they will be an international pariah ... and the concern on the part of all of us, one of the many concerns is that the result will be civil war," Price told reporters.