Ghani said he was ready to fight but the very next day he fled, says Blinken

US secretary of state Antony Blinken while speaking to a television channel said that former president Ashraf Ghani had told him he was "ready to fight to the death" against the Taliban but "the very next day, he fled Afghanistan."

Zalmay Khalilzad the former US envoy to Afghanistan had said earlier that the Biden administration should have pushed the ex-Afghan president harder.
   
"We were gentle with President Ghani. We used diplomacy. We encouraged him," Khalilzad added.

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Blinken informed that he was in touch with Ghani over "many weeks and many months" and that he was "pressing" the former president to agree with the plan for the transfer of power.

“And he told me on the phone he was prepared to do that, but if the Taliban wouldn’t go along, he was ready to fight to the death. And the very next day, he fled Afghanistan," the US secretary of state told a US channel.

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Ghani had fled the country on August 15 as the Taliban entered Kabul. The former president said later that he had fled since the Taliban were "already at the Palace gates".

"I either had to stay or go," Ghani added. The ex-president claimed that he fled the country with  "a vest, shoes and a T-shirt" and didn't take anything else. He claimed that if he hadn't left then he would have suffered the same fate as Najibullah who was executed.

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Ghani denied reports that taken money as he fled Afghanistan asserting that "government valuables fell into the wrong hands".

(With inputs from Agencies)