US officials held talks on Saturday with the authorities in Kabul over Americans held in Afghanistan, the Taliban administration said, as the White House pushes to free citizens it sees as wrongly detained abroad.

Adam Boehler, the Trump administration’s special hostage envoy, and Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US special envoy for Afghanistan, met the Taliban’s foreign minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi.

Both sides will continue talks in future, "particularly regarding citizens imprisoned in each other’s countries", the Afghan foreign ministry said in a statement.

The US State Department and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Khalilzad, who led peace negotiations with the Taliban before their 2021 takeover of Afghanistan, did not reply to a phone call seeking com

See Full Page