As Biden sets 9/11 deadline for Afghan withdrawal, India invited to peace meet

By Arul Louis United Nations, April 14 : India has been invited to an Afghanistan peace conference in Turkey to back up the slowed down negotiations in Qatar between the Taliban and the Kabul government ahead of a delayed US withdrawal from that country, according to diplomatic sources.
The convening of the meeting announced at the UN and in Istanbul on Tuesday comes amid reports that US President Joe Biden would be withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan by September 11, instead of the May 1 deadline set by his predecessor Donald Trump.
Biden’s deadline is symbolic as it was the 9/11 al-Qaeda attack directed from Taliban-ruled Afghanistan 20 years that started the US-led invasion. Between 2,500 and 3,500 US troops remain in Afghanistan, down from about 100,000 at the height of the deployment in 2010.
The conference jointly hosted by the UN, Qatar and Turkey, is scheduled to be held over ten days starting on April 24 in Istanbul, the Turkish foreign ministry said without details about the participants.
The US had pushed for the convening of the conference through the UN and notably had wanted India as a participant.
In a letter to Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani that was reported by TOLOnews, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had said that Washington was going to ask the UN to convene a conference with the participation of the foreign ministers and envoys of India, China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran and the US.