Taliban leaders told their government counterparts at the Afghan peace talks they wouldn’t seek to seize power and that their struggle was to free the country from foreign forces and establish an Islamic system.

An intelligence agency officer was killed and three others were wounded after a roadside bomb targeted a vehicle in Jalalabad city, capital of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province on Tuesday, a provincial government spokesman confirmed.

The Trump administration’s envoy for Afghan peace talks has agreed to testify before a House committee after the panel threatened to issue subpoenas if officials would not appear at a hearing.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he is optimistic about the pace of peace talks between Afghan government officials and the Taliban and expects to see a full withdrawal of US forces from the country by the spring of 2021.

Two months after top Pentagon officials vowed to get to the bottom of whether the Russian government bribed the Taliban to kill American service members, the commander of troops in the region says a detailed review of all available intelligence has not been able to corroborate the existence of such a program.

Afghanistan’s warring sides started negotiations for the first time, bringing together the Taliban and delegates appointed by the Afghan government Saturday for historic meetings aimed at ending decades of war.

Afghanistan’s warring factions have officially begun what is likely to be a long and arduous process of negotiating a peaceful and prosperous future after nearly two decades of war.

Warring sides in Afghanistan have accused each other of staging fresh battlefield attacks as their representatives held a second day of historic, U.S.-brokered peace talks Sunday away from home in Qatar.

The wife of Asim Umar, a senior leader of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent who was killed during a raid in a Taliban stronghold last fall, was among the 5,000 prisoners released by the Afghan government.

Afghanistan’s warring factions are set to begin their first direct peace talks early next week in Qatar amid U.S.-led international calls for them to seize the “historic opportunity” to end the country’s long war.