Afghan peace deal: Trump says Taliban negotiations are 'dead'

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Afghanistan is the US’ longest running conflict

US President Donald Trump says talks with the Taliban aimed at ending the 18-year war in Afghanistan are “dead”.

“As far as I’m concerned, they are dead,” he told White House reporters on Monday.

Over the weekend Mr Trump cancelled secret plans to host a Taliban delegation in the US after the militant group admitted killing a US soldier.

The two sides had appeared close to a deal and the Taliban said the US would “lose the most” for cancelling talks.

Asked about the 14,000 US troops still in Afghanistan, Mr Trump said: “We’d like to get out but we’ll get out at the right time.”

Mr Trump had been due to host the Taliban as well as Afghan president Ashraf Ghani at the Camp David presidential retreat before abruptly cancelling.

“They thought that they had to kill people to put themselves in a little better negotiating position”, he told reporters, calling the attack “a big mistake”.

source: bbc.com