Kabul: The government has released 52 Taliban prisoners as the process of prisoner swap continues with the hope of beginning of the peace negotiations.

Javed Faisal, a spokesman of the National Security Council, said Wednesday that the newly released people were held in the Pul-e-Charkhi central jail and the release was carried out to run the peace process as well to prevent further spread of coronavirus inside the prison.

“We call on the Taliban to speed up the release of people and government hostages and reduce violence,” Faisal said.

Meanwhile, a Taliban spokesman Suhail Shahin has said that they released 20 government troops on Tuesday in Kandahar province.

The government has so far released 902 Taliban prisoners and the insurgents have freed 120 government employees.

Faisal had earlier said that the process of releasing 1,500 prisoners ordered by President Ghani, would be soon completed. He had said that the rest of Taliban prisoners would be released when the direct talks begins.

Taliban demanded the release of their 5,000 comrades held by the government as part of the peace deal they signed with the United States late February.

They had vowed to free 1,000 government servants they hold.

The United States officials seem unhappy with the intensifying of violence by Taliban, with the secretary of defense Mark Esper criticizing that.

Taliban have lately increased attacks on security forces and civilians in different provinces.

Meanwhile, the US peace envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, has met with the Taliban's deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Qatar on Wednesday and discussed the prisoner release, intra-Afghan talks and the US-Taliban peace agreement, Taliban's spokesman Suhail Shaheen said.

Khalilzad and Baradar signed a peace agreement on February 29.

The US-Taliban deal called for the Taliban to release up to 1,000 government prisoners, and for the Afghan government to free up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners before peace talks that were to begin on March 10.

But a dispute over the pace and scale of the releases between the militants and the government, which was not a party to the deal, helped delay the talks.

The Taliban has also increased its attacks recently in the country.

So far, the government has released 902 Taliban prisoners, said the National Security Council’s spokesman Javid Faisal on Tuesday, who said another 500 inmates will be released in the coming days.

Faisal said that at this stage a total of 1,500 prisoners will be released by the Afghan government.

The Afghan government made an earlier pledge to release a total of 5,000 Taliban prisoners but only after the start of the intra-Afghan negotiations and if violence is reduced in a way that leads to a countrywide ceasefire.

The process continues amid hopes for beginning intra-Afghan negotiations, which have been delayed over issues around the prisoner release and other matters.

So far, the Taliban has released 110 prisoners.

https://tolonews.com/afghanistan/us%E2%80%99s-khalilzad-meets-taliban-deputy-leader-qatar