US Congress orders negotiator to testify
The US envoy charged with negotiating with the Taliban was ordered Thursday to testify by the Democratic-led House of Representatives, which complained it had been kept in the dark on the now called-off peace process.
Representative Eliot Engel, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a subpoena to force Zalmay Khalilzad to appear on September 19.
The legally-binding order came days after President Donald Trump said diplomacy with the Taliban was "dead" and offered the bombshell revelation that he had arranged but canceled talks with the Islamist militants at the Camp David presidential retreat.
In the committee's first subpoena since the Democrats won back Congress, Engel said the Trump administration had stalled for months on lawmakers' requests to know more about the Taliban talks.
"More than 2,000 American troops have died in Afghanistan, and I'm fed up with this administration keeping Congress and the American people in the dark on the peace process and how we're going to bring this long war to a close," Engel said in a statement.
"We need to hear directly from the administration's point person on Afghanistan to understand how this process went off the rails," he said.
A subpoena from Congress compels an official to appear, although the Trump administration has taken the unusual stance of defying subpoenas, setting up legal battles.
The State Department did not immediately comment on whether Khalilzad intended to comply as ordered.
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