Representatives from the Taliban met an Afghan government delegation in Saudi Arabia this week to discuss security ahead of next month’s parliamentary elections and a limited prisoner release, three Taliban officials said as quoted in a report by Reuters.

The upcoming parliamentary elections are scheduled for October 20. Election monitoring organizations and some officials have said insecurity is a main challenge for the upcoming elections.

According to the Ministry of Interior, 54,776 members of the Afghan National Security and Defense Force will be deployed for security of 5,100 polling centers five days ahead of the elections.

Akhtar Mohammad Ibrahimi, Senior Deputy Interior Minister for Security, told TOLOnews this week that there will be 9,540 reserved forces.

“They requested us to help them conduct peaceful elections,” said one of the Taliban leaders as quoted by Reuters.

“The Afghan delegation has agreed with us on the release of prisoners,” he said, adding that some prisoners facing minor charges had already been released and officials had divided up others into three categories, depending on their importance, for future release.

According to Reuters, President Ashraf Ghani’s office and the US State Department declined to comment. No comment was available from Zabihullah Mujahid, the Taliban’s main spokesman.

The report said that the meeting in Saudi Arabia came after plans for another meeting with American officials broke down over US demands for a three-month ceasefire, the Taliban representatives said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Some of our senior people were not in the favor of holding talks with the Afghan government as until now we were calling them puppets and refused to meet them,” said one senior Taliban leader in Qatar as quoted by Reuters.

“But our proposed meeting with the Americans failed to take place due to certain reasons,” he said.

The officials said US demands for a ceasefire was something the leadership could not agree to. As a result, no formal meeting was held although there were informal contacts, the report said.

“Our agreement for holding the meeting was only to discuss prisoner exchange and the removal of our people from the UN black list so they can travel,” said one senior Taliban leader from the movement’s political office in Qatar as quoted by Reuters.

The report has been rewritten for style purposes. The original report can be reached here.