The Taliban authorities in Afghanistan on Sunday rejected United States President Donald Trump’s demand to retake management of the Bagram airbase, the Associated Press reported.
The US army’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 had left the airbase, situated 60 km north of Kabul, in Taliban’s management.
On Saturday, Trump had mentioned that the US needed to re-establish its management of Bagram. The US president had mentioned that his administration was “speaking now to Afghanistan” in regards to the matter.
He had not offered particulars in regards to the talks with the Taliban authorities.
“We need it again, and we need it again quickly, straight away,” Trump had informed reporters. “If they don’t do it, you’re going to search out out what I’m going to do.”
In a social media publish, Trump mentioned that “unhealthy issues are going to occur” if Afghanistan doesn’t give the Bagram airbase again “to those who constructed it, the United States of America”.
On Sunday, the Taliban authorities mentioned that it had constantly communicated to Washington that “independence and territorial integrity are of the utmost significance” to Afghanistan.
Deputy Spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat urged the US to undertake a coverage of “realism and rationality”.
The Taliban mentioned that beneath the 2020 Doha Agreement, the US had promised that “it is not going to use or threaten power in opposition to the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan, nor intrude in its inner affairs”.
Washington should “stay trustworthy” to the commitments, the Taliban mentioned.
The 2020 deal, negotiated throughout Trump’s first time period because the president, ended the 20-year US warfare in Afghanistan.
Fasihuddin Fitrat, a senior defence ministry official, was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying {that a} “deal over even an inch of Afghanistan’s soil is just not doable” and that Kabul didn’t want it.
On Thursday, Trump had mentioned that Bagram was “one of many largest airbases on this planet” and was given “to them [Taliban] for nothing”.
The Soviet-era airfield in Bagram has a 3.5-km runway able to serving bomber and enormous cargo plane.
“We’re attempting to get it again as a result of they want issues from us,” The Guardian quoted Trump as saying. “We need that base again. But one of many causes we wish the bottom is, as you realize, it’s an hour away from the place China makes its nuclear weapons.”
This was an obvious reference to Lop Nur, a Chinese testing vary within the Xinjiang province.
Trump’s demand additionally got here amid instability in West Asia and three months after the US, alongside Israel, performed airstrikes on nuclear websites in neighbouring Iran to halt the nation’s nuclear programme. Tehran has lengthy maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian functions.
