US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday urged Afghanistan’s Taliban militants to follow the recent example of a notorious warlord and make an “honorable” peace with the Kabul government.
“There is a path toward an honorable end to the conflict that the Taliban have waged? It is a conflict that cannot be won on the battlefield,” Kerry told an international donor conference in Brussels, France24 reported.
Kerry said a peace deal signed last month by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who heads the Hezb-i-Islami group and was a key figure in Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, was a “model for what might be possible”.
“The message for the Taliban would be: take note,” he said.
Kerry added that a peace deal would in fact achieve the Taliban’s aim of expelling foreign forces from Afghanistan, 15 years after a US-led invasion drove the Islamist group from power.
“A political settlement negotiated with the Afghan government is the only way to end the fighting, ensure lasting stability and achieve a full drawdown of international military forces, which is their goal,” he said.
“Their goal of ridding Afghanistan of external forces will not come by the continued insurgency; it will come by peace.”
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