US, Iran hold peace talks in Islamabad

The first phase of in-person ceasefire talks between the United States and Iran concluded in Pakistan's capital on Saturday, sources close to the mediation told Al Jazeera.
The sources said both sides were exchanging written texts aimed at confirming that they were on the same page on agreements reached in first round of direct in-person talks between Washington and Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Reuters adds: U.S. and Iranian negotiators held their highest-level talks in half a century on Saturday to try to end their war even as President Donald Trump said his military had sunk Tehran's mine-layers and was clearing the Strait of Hormuz.

"We're now starting the process of clearing out the Strait of Hormuz as a favour to countries all over the World," Trump posted, saying 28 Iranian mine-dropping vessels had been destroyed.
Amid conflicting reports, Iranian state TV added that no U.S. ships had crossed the strait, a crucial transit point for global energy supplies that Tehran has effectively blocked.
The waterway, which lies on Iran's southern coast, was one of the main points on the agenda in Islamabad for the first direct U.S.-Iranian talks in more than a decade and the highest-level discussions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The Iranian delegation had arrived on Friday dressed in black in mourning for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and others killed in the six-week war. They carried shoes and bags of some students killed during the U.S. bombing of a school next to a military compound, the Iranian government said.
"There were mood swings from the two sides and the temperature went up and down during the meeting," said another Pakistani source of the first round of talks.
The war has sent global oil prices soaring, killed thousands of people and seen unprecedented hits on Gulf Arab states.
Amid conflicting versions from officials and media in both nations, the U.S. and Iranian sides appeared to remain far apart.
Before the talks began, a senior Iranian source told Reuters the U.S. had agreed to release frozen assets in Qatar and other foreign banks. But a U.S. official swiftly denied that.
As well as release of assets abroad, Tehran is demanding control of the Strait of Hormuz, payment of war reparations and a ceasefire across the region including in Lebanon, according to Iranian state TV and officials.
Trump's stated goals have varied during the campaign, but as a minimum he wants free passage for global shipping through the strait and the crippling of Iran's nuclear enrichment programme to ensure ?it cannot produce an atomic bomb.
U.S. ally Israel, which joined the February 28 attacks on Iran that launched the war, has also been bombing Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon, killing nearly 2,000 people.
Israel and the U.S. have said Lebanon is not part of the Iran-U.S. ceasefire.