Washington:In what could be perceived as a major setback to U.S military intervention in Afghanistan to contain Taliban, a high ranking official in the United States military has said that Taliban is “not losing” in Afghanistan and the stalemate reached a year ago has not changed much.
General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asserted on Saturday that peace can only be reached in Afghanistan through means of negotiations.
“They are not losing right now; I think that is fair to say. We used the term stalemate a year ago and, relatively speaking, it has not changed much,” CNN quoted General Dunford, as saying. Dunford made these comments during a discussion at a security forum in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Dunford said that “military solution” on its own cannot bring peace to Afghanistan and the United States and its NATO partners are working to leverage military, the political and economic pressure to convince the Taliban that it is in their interest to negotiate a political solution to the crisis with the government in Kabul.
On recent elections in Afghanistan, Dunford claimed that the election has concluded successfully, and noted the importance of presidential election due next year.
On November 9, India sent its two retired diplomats – TCA Raghavan, a former envoy to Pakistan, and Amar Sinha, a former ambassador to Afghanistan at the “non-official level” for meeting with Russia and Taliban representatives.
[source_without_link]ANI[/source_without_link]