A Taliban delegation led by Anas Haqqani on Wednesday met former Afghan president Hamid Karzai and former chief executive officer Abdullah Abdullah in Kabul to discuss the new government formation.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the former Afghan senate chairman Fazal Hadi and other officials also attended the meeting, where the political leaders were provided with "foolproof security protocol".
Separately, Haqqani also met Hizb-e-Islami chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Tellingly, the US has classified the Haqqani Network of the Taliban as a terrorist network, holding it responsible for some of the most deadly militant attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.
According to international media reports, a spokesperson for Karzai said that the aim of the meeting was to get the ball rolling on negotiations with deputy Taliban chief and head of the political office of the group in Doha, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration froze Afghan government reserves held in US bank accounts, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in US institutions.
The decision was made by Treasury Secretary Janet L Yellen and officials in the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
A Biden administration official told the BBC: "Any central bank assets the Afghan government have in the United States will not be made available to the Taliban."
According to the Governor Afghan Central Bank (Da Afghanistan Bank) Ajmal Ahmady, who fled the country on the weekend, the DAB's total reserves were approximately $9bn as of last week. He said as per international standards, most of this was held in safe, liquid assets such as US Treasury bonds and gold offshore.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is in UAE
The United Arab Emirates is hosting President Ashraf Ghani "on humanitarian grounds", after he fled Afghanistan amid the Taliban's takeover, the Gulf nation has confirmed.
"The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation can confirm that the UAE has welcomed President Ashraf Ghani and his family into the country on humanitarian grounds," the ministry said in a brief statement on Wednesday.
His whereabouts were unknown until Wednesday, with speculation that he had fled to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Oman.
Afghanistan's ambassador to Tajikistan had accused Ghani of stealing $169m from state funds and called on international police to arrest him.
Ambassador Mohammad Zahir Aghbar told a news conference on Wednesday that Ghani "stole $169m from the state coffers" and called his flight "a betrayal of the state and the nation".
The UAE was one of three nations, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which recognized the previous Taliban regime, which ran Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
An anti-Taliban front forming in Panjshir?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
