US officials hold talks in Kabul over Americans held by Taliban
PHOTO CAPTION: Illustrative photo — Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi attends the Tehran International Conference on Palestine, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Tehran, Iran December 23, 2023. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
By Mohammad Yusuf Yawar and Saeed Shah
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. officials held talks on Saturday with the authorities in Kabul over Americans held in Afghanistan, the Taliban administration said, as the White House pushes to free citizens it sees as wrongly detained abroad.
Adam Boehler, the Trump administration’s special hostage envoy, and Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan, met the Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi.
Both sides will continue talks in future, "particularly regarding citizens imprisoned in each other’s countries", the Afghan foreign ministry said in a statement.
The U.S. State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Khalilzad, who led peace negotiations with the Taliban before their 2021 takeover of Afghanistan, did not reply to a phone call seeking comment.
A source familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking said there was frustration in Washington over the Taliban’s slow process of living up to its international commitments on rights and hostages, which had dimmed prospects for a deal on critical minerals or improving broader relations.
IMPEDIMENT TO IMPROVED RELATIONS
Mahmood Habibi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is the most high-profile American detainee, Washington says. But the case is particularly complex, as the Taliban denies holding him.
The State Department describes Habibi's detention as a major impediment to exploring increased engagement with Afghanistan. The Taliban says they have no knowledge of his whereabouts, three years after he disappeared in Kabul.
The Taliban rejected an offer made last year to trade Habibi for alleged Osama bin Laden aide Mohammad Rahim al-Afghani, the last Afghan held in the Guantanamo Bay military prison.
The Taliban administration, which seized power after 20 years of U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, is not recognised by Washington.
The visiting U.S. officials also met Abdul Ghani Baradar, Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs, who led the Taliban side in the peace negotiations with Khalilzad.
Baradar's office said he laid out investment opportunities in Afghanistan, including rare earth minerals, and complained about U.S. sanctions. He urged the U.S. delegation "to pursue engagement rather than confrontation in Afghanistan, to play its role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan," it said.
HOSTAGES A TRUMP PRIORITY
U.S. President Donald Trump has made freeing Americans held abroad a top priority and has secured the release of dozens, including from Afghanistan, Russia and Venezuela.
Trump signed an executive order this month paving the way for Washington to designate countries a state sponsor of wrongful detention and impose punitive measures, including sanctions, on those it says are wrongfully holding Americans.
Boehler visited Kabul in March and took back with him George Glezmann, an American detained in 2022 while in Afghanistan as a tourist. In January, the U.S. freed an Afghan convicted by an American court on charges of drug smuggling and terrorism in exchange for two U.S. citizens held in Afghanistan.
(Reporting by Mohammad Yunus Yawar, Saeed Shah, Trevor Hunnicutt, Anusha Shah; Writing by Saeed Shah; Editing by Jan Harvey and Timothy Heritage // REUTERS)
