Afghanistan's High Peace Council offers direct talks with Taliban to settle dispute

A representative of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, a non-government body overseeing peace efforts, said at a conference in Moscow that the council was ready for talks with the Taliban and has asked them to pick a date to start the negotiations.

"We discussed the subject of direct talks with the Taliban and asked them to choose the place and the time of their start," Ehsan Tahiri, spokesman for the High Peace Council, said, according to Russia's RIA news agency.