Blinken to travel to Qatar but won't be meeting with Taliban
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Doha, Qatar on Sunday to meet with Qatari leaders and express gratitude for their help with the U.S. evacuation efforts from Afghanistan. From there he'll go to Ramstein Air Base in Germany to meet with his German counterpart and Afghans awaiting processing, he said in remarks about Afghanistan at the State Department Friday.
During his trip to the Gulf, Blinken will not be meeting with the Taliban, according to a senior State Department official, who said, "there is no plan right now." If it is appropriate to speak with the Taliban, Blinken will do so. The U.S. has open channels of communication with the Taliban, who now control Afghanistan, following the collapse of the former government and the completion of the U.S. withdrawal last week. U.S. diplomat Ian McCarry is in Doha and is part of a team in the process of being formed for engagement with the Taliban. Zalmay Khalilzad, who has served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, will also have a role on the team. Khalilzad negotiated the Trump-era deal with the Taliban and has continued in his role as envoy at the request of the Biden administration.
Blinken said the diplomatic team at Doha was "up and running," and that the State Department was in "constant contact" with Americans who remain in Afghanistan and may still wish to leave. Those Americans have been assigned dedicated case management teams to provide guidance on their eventual exit, he said.
He described most of the roughly 100 American citizens still in Afghanistan as dual nationals with extended families and said "it's no surprise that deciding whether or not to leave the place they call home is a wrenching decision."
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