Turkey said Tuesday 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 Istanbul meeting was planned as the new US administration of President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of all forces from the country 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 and the UN.
The US is trying to add urgency to long-stalled peace talks that could finally see it end a military involvement in Afghanistan that began in response to the 2001 terror attacks on Washington and New York.
Ankara said last week the talks would be between representatives of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban.
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