U.S. speeds up direct talks with Taliban

[Saifullah Sani]

By Karen DeYoung, Tuesday, May 17, 2:45 AM

The administration has accelerated direct talks with the Taliban, initiated several months ago, that U.S. officials say they hope will enable President Obama to report progress toward a settlement of the Afghanistan war when he announces troop withdrawals in July.

A senior Afghan official said a U.S. representative attended at least three meetings in Qatar and Germany, one as recently as “eight or nine days ago,” with a Taliban official considered close to Mohammad Omar, the group’s leader.

State Department spokesman Michael A. Hammer on Monday declined to comment on the Afghan official’s assertion, saying the United States had a “broad range of contacts across Afghanistan and the region, at many levels. . . . We’re not going to get into the details of those contacts.”

The talks have proceeded on several tracks, including through nongovernmental intermediaries and Arab and European governments. The Taliban has made clear its preference for direct negotiations with the Americans and has proposed establishing a formal political office, with Qatar under consideration as a venue, according to U.S. officials.

An attempt to open talks with the insurgent group failed late last year when an alleged Taliban leader, secretly flown by NATO to Kabul, turned out to be a fraud. “Nobody wants to do that again,” a senior Obama administration official said.

Other earlier meetings between Afghan government representatives and Taliban delegates faltered when the self-professed insurgents could not establish their bona fides as genuine representatives of the group’s leadership.

But the Obama administration is “getting more sure” that the contacts currently underway are with those who have a direct line to Omar and influence in the Pakistan-based Quetta Shura, or ruling council, he heads, according to one of several senior U.S. officials who discussed the closely held initiative only on the condition of anonymity.

The officials cautioned that the discussions were preliminary. But they said “exploratory” conversations, first reported in February by the New Yorker magazine, have advanced significantly in terms of the substance and the willingness of both sides to engage.

Rumors of the talks have brought a torrent of criticism in recent weeks from Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s political opponents, who say that he will ultimately compromise Afghan democracy. In one indication of U.S. eagerness to get negotiations moving, however, administration officials described the criticism in positive terms as evidence that Afghans were starting to take the idea of negotiations seriously.

The Taliban, one U.S. official said, is “going to have to talk to both the Afghans and the Americans” if the process is to proceed to the point that it would significantly affect the level of violence and provide what the Taliban considers an acceptable share of political power in Afghanistan.

Such an outcome is likely to be years away, officials said. They said that the United States has not changed its insistence that substantive negotiations be Afghan-led. “The Afghans have been fully briefed” on U.S.-Taliban contacts, an American official said, and “the Pakistanis only partially so.”U.S. speeds up direct talks with Taliban - The Washington Post

 

[Leader]

and here we go...

 

[Pioneerfirst]

On one side USA claim that Pakistan is supporting Taliban and dislike it.One the other hand thay are negotiating with them.
It seems that US wants Pakistan to fight Talban and bring US on upper hand so that they can exit respectfully.

 

[mehru]

So should we say that US is also playing double game? On one hand, they don't allow us to have any contacts with Taliban but on the other hand they don't hesitate to settle issues with Taliban through dialogue. Why is that?

 

[mjnaushad]

Why talk with Taliban.... Aren't they all bad....

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

So when Pakistan wanted to Talk and end war it was bad , now Obama wants to do it so its good

 

[Leader]

the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has one point agenda which they held in all the previous talks with USA, that is to free Afghanistan from foreign invaders, unconditionally... they are not going to become part of the government or any deal...

by thte way it seems Obama has seriously started to work for his second election campaign....

 

[53fd]

US playing double games with the Taliban & Pakistan. This is proof now. They want Pakistan to sever their ties with the Taliban & attack them, while they have peace talks with them in Afghanistan. I don't think the Pakistani establishment & Army would be falling for this trap.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

US, UK pushing UN for lifting sanctions against 18 senior Taliban leaders

Britain and the United States are pressing for United Nations sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban figures to be lifted later this month in the strongest indication yet that the western powers are looking for a negotiated peace with the Taliban.

Officals believe the move would send a clear signal to insurgents that reintegrating into Afghan society is possible if they put down their arms.
The sanctions were imposed in 1999, when the Taliban were in power, and were expanded after the 9/11 attacks on America.

They ban about 140 individuals from travelling or holding bank accounts. Removing the restrictions has been a key demand of insurgents in Afghanistan and has long been supported by the Afghan government.

Candidates include well-known figures who have acted as intermediaries in contacts between the Afghan government and the insurgents in recent years such as Arsala Rahmani, a former Taliban education minister, as well as Qalamuddin, who has kept a low profile since being released from prison in 2005.

An Afghan minister also said that lifting the sanctions on such men would facilitate the establishment of a political office for the Taliban in a third country as it would allow key intermediaries, mainly former senior figures in the movement now living in Kabul, to travel.

Turkey, Turkmenistan and Qatar have all offered to host such an office, Afghan and western officials in Kabul have told the Guardian.

Senior Afghan officials in Kabul also said that contacts with the Taliban leadership could now be described as "systematic" and a "significant advance" on earlier "disorganised" discussions.

The talks involve an envoy traveling between Kabul and Pakistan on a regular basis relaying proposals and counterproposals, said the minister, who has direct knowledge of the "peace process" as it is known in the Afghan capital.

The meetings come at a time of intensifying effort to find a negotiated solution to the 10-year-old conflict in Afghanistan as western governments prepare to withdraw troops.

In another important development, representatives of the Haqqani network, one of the most effective and intractable of the insurgent factions, visited Kabul "very recently", the officials told the Guardian.

The Haqqani network, named after its leader Jalaluddin Haqqani, is widely believed to have a relationship with the ISI, Pakistan's main military intelligence service.

In the last six years only 15 names have been removed from the sanctions list. A key shift has been in Washington where there is now almost unanimous support for the delisting of dozens of individuals.

Delisting requires the assent of the five permanent members of the UN security council. Russia has made clear that it currently opposes any such move and may block any mass lifting of sanctions. France supports the move while China appears ambivalent.

A request for the delisting of 47 individuals was supposed to be submitted by Kabul to the UN sanctions committee before a key meeting on 16 June.
However, the necessary documentation for only 18 individuals was assembled in time by Afghan officials.

Further opportunities to remove individuals will come later in the year.

Britain and America are also keen to scrap entirely or split the sanctions list to distinguish between al-Qaida and the Taliban. However, the proposed lifting of UN sanctions has not been met with universal approval in Afghanistan.

"If there is a deal with the Taliban and people like him [Qalamuddin] come back to power it will all go back to being like before and we will lose all our freedoms," said Monisa, a 24-year-old female NGO worker in Kabul.

Earlier this week Qalamuddin told the Guardian the restrictions weighed on him "as a human being" and that he has "rights like anyone else".

Active Taliban are unlikely to be among those removed from the sanctions list, officials said. "Don't expect to see Mullah Omar [the Taliban overall leader] among them," one said.

It was recently disclosed that US officials and a Taliban representative have held three meetings in the last two months, two in Qatar and one in Germany.

US, UK pushing UN for lifting sanctions against 18 senior Taliban leaders | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online