U.S. Congress Subpoenas Khalilzad

A U.S. Congressional Committee has issued a subpoena to Trump’s special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad to appear before the panel on September 19.

The subpoena has been issued to Mr. Khalilzad by representative Eliot Engel chairman of House Foreign Affairs Committee to explain the failure of the US-Taliban talks before the panel.

“For months, we haven’t been able to get answers on the Afghanistan peace plan, and now the President is saying the plan is dead. We need to hear directly from the Administration’s point person on Afghanistan to understand how this process went off the rails,” Engel said in a statement released on Thursday, September 12.

Meanwhile, the committee chief blamed the U.S. Department of States for keeping “the congress and American people in dark” on the Afghan peace process.

The subpoena comes as U.S. State Department refused congressional requests in February, April, and earlier this month for briefings or testimony from Ambassador Khalilzad on the Afghanistan peace plan.

And on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump said that negotiation with the Taliban “are dead” and emphasized that he had no further interest in meeting with the leaders of the group to end the war in Afghanistan.