Afghan president objects to Taliban prisoner release in U.S., Taliban peace deal

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Sunday said his government has not signed off on a United States peace agreement pledge to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners by March 10.

The U.S. and the Taliban reached a deal Saturday that is poised to end the sides' 18-year conflict in Afghanistan. The main conditions of the agreement are a phased U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in exchange for the Taliban denying extremist groups from using Afghanistan as a base to launch attacks on the U.S. and its allies. It also stipulated the U.S. will work to "expeditiously release" the Taliban prisoners held by the Afghan government in the hopes of igniting peace talks between the government and the Taliban by the March deadline.

But Ghani said that shouldn't be a prerequisite for intra-Afghan discussions, and instead should be part of the negotiations. The government, he said, has made no such commitment. "It is not in the authority of the United States to decide, they are only a facilitator," he said, adding that "it's the right and the self-will of the people of Afghanistan."

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The deal, while heralded by the Trump administration, is anything but settled, and it already has a number of critics. This particular hold up, BBC reports, looks like it stems from the U.S. using different language in its communications with Kabul and the Taliban. The deal itself says the U.S. will help get the prisoners released before the intra-Afghan talks, but a joint U.S.-Afghan declaration only said Washington will play a role in helping the other two sides assess the "feasibility" of a release. Read more at BBC and Al Jazeera.