CIA Director William Burns held a secret meeting in Kabul with a top Taliban leader. Burns met with top Taliban political leader Abdul Ghani Baradar on Monday, the Washington Post first reported, citing unnamed US officials.
The discussion is believed to have centered on the August 31 deadline to remove all US and foreign troops from the country. The US has said it needs more time in order to evacuate its citizens and to oversee the evacuation of other foreign nationals and Afghans trying to leave the country.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said on Tuesday that the Islamist group would not agree to an extension of the August 31 deadline, and accused the US of evacuating skilled Afghans. The Taliban previously has called the deadline a “red line” and said that if it was not observed there would be “consequences.”
Baradar spent eight years in prison after being arrested in Karachi by the CIA in a joint operation with Pakistan’s intelligence service in 2010. He was freed in 2018 after the US pushed for his release while starting talks with the Taliban.