ISTANBUL: Turkey said an international peace conference on Afghanistan scheduled for April 24 in Istanbul has been postponed until mid-May.
“We decided to postpone the talks” until celebrations for the holy month of Ramadan end in mid-May, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told HaberTurk television in an interview.
The postponement comes after the US administration of President Joe Biden last week announced the withdrawal of all American forces from Afghanistan before this year’s 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
Turkey had first announced the conference, co-sponsored by the United Nations and Qatar, to run from April 24 to May 4.
But Cavusoglu said: “We believed it would be useful to postpone” after consultations with Doha, the UN and Washington.
