Merkel: Continued dialogue needed with Taliban to protect gains of past 20 years

By AFP 25 August 2021, 2:00 pm

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks during a plenary session at the Bundestag in Berlin on August 25, 2021. (Tobias Schwarz/AFP)

BERLIN — The international community must maintain dialogue with the Taliban if it is to protect any improvements made in Afghanistan during the last two decades of NATO’s deployment, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

“Our goal must be to preserve as much as possible what we have achieved in terms of changes in Afghanistan in the last 20 years. This is something the international community must talk about with the Taliban,” Merkel says, in a speech to parliament.