President Donald Trump announced the resumption of peace talks with the Taliban after making a surprise trip to Afghanistan to celebrate Thanksgiving with U.S. troops.

“The Taliban wants to make a deal — we’ll see if they make a deal. If they do they do, and if they don’t they don’t. That’s fine,” Trump said following a meeting with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.

Trump didn’t say how or when the negotiations would resume.

So far, the Taliban has refused to hold direct talks with Kabul. Ghani has sought to take control of efforts to reach a negotiated settlement of the 18-year Afghan war and to shift the talks from the Gulf state of Qatar to Kabul.

The president, making his first visit to the war-torn nation, was on the ground for more than 3 hours. He was greeted by Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had arrived in the country separately on Wednesday.

He delivered brief remarks and served turkey and trimmings to troops in a cafeteria at Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan.

“There’s nowhere I’d rather celebrate this Thanksgiving than right here with the toughest, strongest, best and bravest warriors on the face of the earth,” Trump said to about 1,500 troops in fatigues.

Trump on Thursday again faulted the Taliban for the death of Army Sgt. First Class Elis A. Barreto Ortiz in September, which led to the abrupt cancellation of peace talks, and he vowed: “We’re going to stay until such time as we have a deal or we have total victory, and they want to make a deal very badly.”

Trump also said he wants to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 8,600. The U.S. currently has fewer than 14,000 troops in the nation, though the Pentagon won’t confirm exact numbers.

Ghani thanked Americans who have made the “ultimate sacrifice” in Afghanistan. “Together we will succeed,” he said appearing before troops with Trump. “We will never forget what 9/11 brought us.”

Ghani, later in a tweet, said that he and the U.S. president discussed the military progress by Afghan and U.S. forces, including what he said was the destruction of the local affiliate of Islamic State in the east of the country.

The Afghan president also said that he and Trump stressed that the Taliban must agree to a cease-fire to prove their commitment to peace. He didn’t say whether the truce must occur before the resumption of negotiations.

In a clear reference to neighboring Pakistan, Ghani also said that “terrorist safe havens outside Afghanistan must be dismantled.” Taliban officials reside in Pakistan and fighters often retreat there, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.

Trump’s visit to Afghanistan and his announcement that peace talks will resume comes a little more than a week after the Taliban released two Western hostages, one an American, after more than three years in captivity. The move, part of an American-brokered swap under which the Afghan government released three senior Taliban military commanders, was part of an effort by U.S. and other Western diplomats to persuade Trump to resume the talks.

The trip was conducted under the highest of security precautions, and only a tight circle of White House officials knew in advance.

Trump had been in Palm Beach, Fla., for Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago resort. He secretly left Florida on Wednesday evening and flew to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington to board Air Force One for the 13-hour trip to Afghanistan — a separate Air Force One remained in Florida. Cellphones, hot spots and other devices emitting a signal were confiscated from everyone traveling with the president.

To keep suspicions at bay, Twitter messages were scheduled to be sent from the president’s account during the hours he didn’t have internet access. The plane took off and landed in the dark with interior lights off and shades drawn.

The U.S. and the Taliban had resumed direct talks in Qatar’s capital Doha in mid-2018 in an effort to iron out a foreign troop withdrawal deal that would lead to Afghan-to-Afghan talks and a negotiated settlement of the war.

By Sept. 1, they had succeeded in reaching a withdrawal accord, said Zalmay Khalilzad, the chief U.S. negotiator to the Afghan peace process.

Under the proposed agreement, roughly 5,000 U.S. troops would withdraw 135 days after the deal is signed.

But in September, the administration’s efforts suffered a significant setback. Trump said the Afghan government and Taliban officials had been set to travel to Camp David for talks. But the meeting was called off at the last minute after a Taliban bomb attack in Kabul killed an American soldier, Sgt. Ortiz.

Following the attack, the president said, “I immediately canceled the meeting and called off peace negotiations. What kind of people would kill so many in order to seemingly strengthen their bargaining position?”

The cancellation of the meeting created significant uncertainty over the potential for a comprehensive settlement of the nearly 18-year Afghan war, America’s longest.

President Trump speaking with members of the military during a surprise Thanksgiving Day visit at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.

the associated press