This archive report was first published on 8 September 2019.
Published on September 8, 2019, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed optimism about the possibility of renewed talks with the Taliban, despite President Donald Trump's decision to cancel a summit at Camp David.
Trump had invited Taliban leaders, along with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, for talks on a draft deal that would see the US withdraw thousands of troops and end its longest war.
However, the summit was scrapped after a Taliban attack killed a US soldier, prompting Trump to cite the incident as a reason for scuttling the meeting.
"I'm not pessimistic," Pompeo told NBC. "I've watched the Taliban do things and say things they've not been permitted to do before."
Despite the cancellation, Pompeo said the US would not relent in fighting the militants, and that the US needed a "significant commitment" from the Taliban for talks to resume.
He also warned that the US was inflicting a toll on the Taliban, saying that US forces had killed more than 1,000 insurgents in the past 10 days alone.
"If the Taliban don't behave, if they don't deliver on the commitments they made to us for weeks and in some cases months, the president of the United States is not going to reduce the pressure," Pompeo said on CNN.
The Taliban, however, accused Trump of showing "neither experience nor patience," and warned that Americans would be harmed more than any other by the decision to cancel the summit.
