Baku, December 12, AZERTAC

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday defended President Biden's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan while appearing before the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee, which has long sought to question him over the deadly evacuation, CBS news reported.

"I firmly believe the president's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was the right one," he told lawmakers.

Blinken declined to take the blame for decisions that were made leading up to the exit, explaining that actions taken by the first Trump administration left the Biden administration in a weak position and intelligence assessments expected Kabul to remain the hands of the Afghan government.

Blinken's testimony came nearly three months after the committee voted along party lines to recommend that the nation's top diplomat be held in contempt of Congress amid a standoff over his appearance before the panel to discuss its investigation into the 2021 withdrawal.

The committee and State Department had been at odds for months, leading Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman, to issue multiple subpoenas for Blinken to testify in September. McCaul said Blinken's appearance was important as the committee considers "potential legislation aimed at helping prevent the catastrophic mistakes of the withdrawal."

"Tragically, more than three years after this administration's disastrous withdrawal, you're finally here to take responsibility," McCaul said Wednesday, also accusing Blinken in the lead up to the evacuation of denying "imminent and dangerous threats to American interests, American citizens and our decade long Afghan partners, all the while, the Taliban captured province after province on their march to Kabul."

Republicans on the committee released a lengthy report in September that detailed their yearslong investigation into the chaotic exit from Afghanistan and accused the Biden administration of misleading the public about the end of the 20-year war.

Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, on Wednesday called the report "partisan and misleading" and said Republicans have "muddled the facts" about whether a suicide bombing that killed 13 U.S. service members was preventable.

Blinken, whose opening statement was repeatedly disrupted by protesters, acknowledged the service members who died and their families, saying he deeply regretted that the U.S. "did not do more and could not do more to protect them."

"To the extent President Biden faced a choice, it was between ending the war or escalating it," Blinken said. "In the three years since the end of our country's longest war. All of us, including myself, have wrestled with what we could have done differently during that period and over the proceeding two decades."

Blinken also acknowledged that the Taliban was not in compliance with a deal the Trump administration struck with the group to withdraw U.S. forces from the country by May 2021. The deal, known as the Doha Agreement, laid out a series of conditions for the Taliban to fulfill in order for U.S. forces to fully leave Afghanistan.