Washington announces talks with the Taliban – Secret behind the reserves of the Afghan Central Bank

The United States announced on Thursday rare talks between American officials and leaders of the ruling Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

The US State Department said that a US delegation discussed with Taliban officials efforts to release billions of dollars of Afghan Central Bank reserves.

The meeting, held Wednesday, was attended by US Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West and Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Bryan Nelson, the department said in a statement.

A few days ago, Reuters reported that American and other Taliban officials exchanged proposals to release the reserves of the Afghan Central Bank of billions of dollars held abroad by pumping them into a trust fund, a sign of progress in efforts to ease the economic crisis in Afghanistan.

Agency sources reported major disagreements between the two sides, including the Taliban’s refusal to replace certain individuals in the bank’s top political posts, one of whom, like many of the movement’s leaders, is under U.S. sanctions.

Some experts said such a move would help restore confidence in the establishment by isolating it from the intervention of the ruling group, which seized power a year ago.

While the Taliban do not reject the idea of a trust fund, they are opposed to a US proposal for third-party control of the fund to take over the custody and disbursement of the returned reserves, a Taliban source said on condition of anonymity.

A US source said that the US had held talks with Switzerland and other parties on the establishment of a mechanism to include the trust fund, through which payments would be determined with the help of an international council.

The American source added that one possible model could be a fund such as the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, which is managed by the World Bank to receive foreign development assistance contributions to Kabul.