US President Donald Trump said Friday night that the Taliban was tough and smart but also "tired of fighting."

Speaking to journalists at a press conference, Trump reiterated his decision on troop withdrawals and said "we�ll be down very shortly over the next couple of weeks to 4,000 - less than 4,000 in Afghanistan.

"And then we�ll make that final determination a little bit later on."

On the Taliban, Trump said: "We�re dealing very well with the Taliban. They�re very tough, they�re very smart, they�re very sharp. But, you know, it�s been 19 years, and even they are tired of fighting, in all fairness."

Trump also said the US had been serving as a "police force" in Afghanistan.

"And we really served as a police force, because if we wanted to do what we had to do, we would have fought a lot differently than they have over their 19 years.

"They didn�t fight it properly. They were police, okay? They�re not police; they�re - they�re soldiers. So there�s a difference. The police - nobody has more respect for police than I do, but they have to do their own policing."

Trump went on to say the US is "having some very good discussions with the Taliban, as you probably heard. It�s been public. And - but we�ll be down to - very shortly, we�ll be down to less than 4,000 soldiers."

"And so we�ll be out of there, knowing that certain things have to happen - certain things have to be fulfilled. But 19 years is a long time, 8,000 miles away. Nineteen years is a long time," he said.

This comes amid the first rounds of intra-Afghan negotiations following the US-Taliban agreement signed in Doha in February that set out certain conditions - one of which is the withdrawal of all foreign troops by around April next year.

LINK: https://www.ansarpress.com/english/20368

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