A member of the Taliban Fateh fighter, a "special forces" unit, stands guard outside the US embassy in Afghanistan displaying a Taliban flag in the outer concrete wall in Kabul on September 8, 2021. (Photo by Aamir QURESHI / AFP)
The Taliban warned the United States not to “destabilise” the regime during their first face-to-face talks since the US withdrawal, its foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi said on Saturday.
“We clearly told them that trying to destabilise the government in Afghanistan is good for no one,” Muttaqi told the Afghan state news agency Bakhtar after talks in Doha.
“Good relations with Afghanistan are good for everyone. Nothing should be done to weaken the existing government in Afghanistan which can lead to problems for the people,” he said, in a recorded statement translated by AFP.
Muttaqi’s remarks came on the first of two days of talks with a US team led by the State Department’s Deputy Special Representative Tom West and top USAID humanitarian official Sarah Charles.
No immediate comment was available from the US side.
The hardline Taliban regained power in August as the United States ended its 20-year occupation with a withdrawal that included a chaotic airlift of foreign residents and Afghans.
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