Amrullah Saleh asks Ashraf Ghani to release tapes on peace talks with Khalilzad | World News

Amarullah Saleh, the former vice president of Afghanistan, has asked ex-president Asharaf Ghani to release the tapes of his conversations on the peace process with Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special representative to Afghanistan, who quit last month.

In a tweet, Saleh also demanded the release of tapes of Ghani’s conversations with other “relevant foreign diplomats”, particularly from July and August.

“I call on @ashrafghani to release the tapes ( esp Jul/Aug) of the conversations with Khalilzad & other relevant foreign diplmts on peace process to counter the growing propaganda that it was & is all the Afghan fault. I know these tapes exist & hope you have them. This z d time,” Saleh said in his tweet.

Ghani must do it to counter the growing propaganda that accuses the Afghan side of the collapse, Saleh said in a tweet.

He also said in a subsequent tweet posted in Persian that Khalilzad’s deceptions became apparent, after which it was decided that other face-to-face and telephone conversations related to him with other foreign delegations should be recorded in secret. “Now that salt is sprinkled on the wounds of our nation every day, it is necessary to publish these conversations.”

The tweets were in response to claims made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a recent interview that Ghani was responsible for the collapse of the previous Afghan government.

“I talked with Ashraf Ghani on the telephone and he endorsed that a new government will be shaped led by the Taliban. We wanted an all-inclusive government in Afghanistan. Ashraf Ghani accepted that but the next day he fled Afghanistan,” Blinken had told CBS News.

Khalilzad had also said previously that Afghanistan government collapsed since Afghan security forces did not show willingness to fight the Taliban. The insurgent group stormed to power in August following a military campaign which started just three months ago.

Khalilzad resigned in October, and was replaced by Thomas West. Blinken thanked Khalilzad for his “decades of service”.

Khalilzad was the person who led talks with the Taliban in Qatar that resulted in the Doha agreement between the Islamic group and former US President Donald Trump to fully withdraw US troops by May 2021.

But he has been criticised for not pressing the Taliban hard enough during peace talks.

Afghan leaders lashed out at Khalilzad after his resignation. Rahmatullah Nabil, the former chief of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS), called him a con-man. Rangin Dadfar Spanta, a former Afghan foreign minister, called Khalilzad out for his “destructive role in a shameful process”.