WASHINGTON: The latest terrorist attack in Kabul’s diplomatic enclave is unlikely to affect efforts to resume reconciliation talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, the US State Department said on Saturday “One attack would not, and should not, alter that momentum or dissuade people from continuing to try to achieve it,” the department’s spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing in Washington.

“In the past, I’ve never seen a single attack in Afghanistan have any practical effect on stemming that desire and that goal to get to a reconciliation process,” he added.

On Friday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani told a news briefing in Kabul that “serious” reconciliation talks with pro-peace Taliban factions will begin very soon with the goal of reaching an agreement.

Published in Dawn, December 13th, 2015