The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) met secretly with a Taliban leader in Kabul on Monday, and sources told the Taliban that the CIA had not confirmed the reported meeting between William Burns and Mullah Baradar.
US President Joe Biden has set a deadline for August 31 for his country's forces to leave Afghanistan. Partners - as well as the UK - want that time to be extended.
U.S. forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001, following the 9/11 attacks.
But there is not enough information about the meeting
If confirmed, it would be a high level of communication between the United States and the Taliban since the militants seized Kabul on August 15, causing the internationally backed Afghan government to flee.
About 5,800 US troops are guarding Kabul airport as thousands of foreign nationals and Afghans try to leave the country.
The Washington Post reports that the talks may have included a US military deadline to end its deportation operation. Also on Tuesday, the Taliban said no more Afghan people would be allowed to leave the country, nor would a US deadline for withdrawal be extended.
Mullah Baradar is one of four people who founded the Taliban in 1994. He was arrested in a US-Pakistani operation in 2010 and served eight years in prison.
Since 2019, he has been head of the Taliban political office in Qatar.
In February 2020, he signed the Doha agreement on the withdrawal of US and Nato troops from Afghanistan.
He was also the first Taliban leader to communicate directly with the US president, after holding telephone talks with Donald Trump in 2020.
Who is Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar?
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was one of four people who founded the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1994.
He rose to prominence in the group after the Taliban was expelled from Afghanistan and the United States in 2001.
He was arrested in connection with a joint US-led invasion of Pakistan, south of the Pakistani city of Karachi in February 2010.
He was not heard from again until 2012 when his name was listed on a list of Taliban detainees whom the Afghan government wanted to release to facilitate peace talks. Pakistan later released Baradar on September 21 but his whereabouts are unknown. the group's religious leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, and one of his most trusted commanders.
Afghanistan's top leaders hoped that someone like him could persuade the Taliban to hold talks with the Kabul government - a government plan aimed at regulation after Nato forces left the country in 2014.
He is one of the group's leaders who has been keen to hold talks with the United States and the ousted government of Afghanistan.
He was accused of overseeing the group's day-to-day operations and funding.
He held key positions in all major wars in Afghanistan, remaining commander-in-chief of the Taliban in the western region of Herat as well as in Kabul.
At the time the Taliban were deported, he was deputy minister of defense. His wife is his sister Mullah Omar.
He was carrying out intense attacks on Afghan government forces, said an Afghan official who did not want to be named at the time of his arrest.
Mullah Baradar, like other Taliban leaders, was targeted by the UN Security Council, which had implicated him in seizing the group's assets, banning travel, and preventing the group from selling arms.
Prior to his 2010 arrest, he made several public statements. But one of those reports was in 2009 in July, when he exchanged words with Newsweek newspaper.
