the softening up for this contact was already started in May
U.S. Has Held Meetings With Aide to Taliban Leader, Officials Say
By CARLOTTA GALL and RUHULLAH KHAPALWAK
Published: May 26, 2011
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan American officials have met with a senior aide to the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, at least three times in recent months in the first direct exploratory peace talks, officials in the region said.
Tayeb Agha, left, an aide to the Taliban leader, has met with Americans in exploratory peace talks.
The meetings have been facilitated by Germany and Qatar, but American officials have been present each time, meeting with Tayeb Agha, who is a close personal assistant to Mullah Omar, the officials said. The C.I.A. and the State Department have been involved in the meetings, one official said.
The meetings were first reported by The Washington Post last week and the German magazine Der Spiegel this week. A senior Afghan official and Western officials working in the region confirmed the reports on the condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to the news media about the issue.
Begun well before the killing of Osama bin Laden on May 2, the meetings represent a clear shift in the attitude of the Obama administration toward peace talks with the Taliban, first signaled by a speech in February by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Western officials said. In that speech Mrs. Clinton said that previous requirements for starting talks could instead be considered desired outcomes, opening the way to exploratory meetings without preconditions.
The presence of Mr. Agha, a longtime personal assistant of the reclusive Taliban leader, is a sign that the Taliban are serious despite their public opposition to peace talks, the officials said. Through spokesmen and in e-mailed statements, the Taliban have always rejected peace talks until foreign forces leave Afghanistan. But privately, through intermediaries, they have insisted on direct meetings with United States officials, which would give them official recognition of their movement.
Mr. Agha speaks English and Arabic, and he has been easily identified, avoiding the false start that occurred last year when an impostor posed as a Taliban commander, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, in meetings with Afghans and NATO officials. Mr. Agha is reported to have attended a dinner hosted by the king of Saudi Arabia several years ago, which was seen as the first American-sanctioned overture toward the Taliban.
Yet the senior Afghan official cautioned that the meetings might not represent much because Mr. Agha was known to be no longer particularly close to Mullah Omar. Mr. Agha was a much trusted personal assistant, answering phone calls and making appointments for Mullah Omar, for most of the Talibans time in power, from 1994 to 2001. Now in his late 30s, Mr. Agha is thought to have lived in Quetta, Pakistan, since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, and to have remained in touch with the Taliban leader. Yet his authority to speak for the insurgents remains unclear.
Mullah Omars ability to control the increasingly radicalized insurgent commanders and groups allied with the Taliban also remains in question. He is still the spiritual leader of the Taliban movement, and he certainly retains strong command over Taliban forces in southern Afghanistan, which represent the bulk of the insurgency. Yet the increasingly radical Pakistani Taliban groups that send insurgents to Afghanistan and the Haqqani family, which runs its own fief in Pakistans tribal areas, have disregarded Mullah Omars orders in the past despite swearing allegiance to him.
The meetings have been conducted without the participation of Pakistan, which has long called for negotiations with the Taliban as a way to end the war on its western border and which has insisted that it also be included. Pakistans chief of army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, even offered President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan his help in bringing Taliban insurgent leaders, who are widely known to use Pakistans tribal area as a sanctuary, to the negotiating table.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/world/asia/27taliban.html