A Taliban spokesman said Monday that the Islamic militant group would only talk to the US-backed Kabul administration if tens of thousands of Western troops leave Afghanistan.
The hardline movementÂ’s spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi had said a week ago that the Taliban were ready to respond positively to President Hamid KarzaiÂ’s renewed offer of negotiations. But Ahmadi appeared to be stepping back from that stance on Monday by making the apparently new condition involving the withdrawal of foreign soldiers from the insurgency-hit country.
| That means they don't want to talk right now, natch. Prob'ly Mullah Omar vetoed it. |
“If these talks... rescue our country’s independence and result in finding a way for the withdrawal of foreign forces, (Taliban) are ready to participate,” Ahmadi said in a statement. But he said that the Taliban did not believe the Afghan government had the authority to meet such conditions. He also accused the media of misinterpreting comments by the Taliban, saying they were “at the service of the invading forces.”
Karzai made the offer of talks with the insurgents on September 9. He has regularly offered talks with the Taliban, which was in government between 1996 and 2001, and there have been rumours that contact has already been made. Karzai also said the radical Hizb-i-Islami faction of former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which is fighting the government and its allies separately from the Taliban, was welcome to join a peace process.
KarzaiÂ’s previous suggestions of negotiations have not included the leaders of the intensifying uprising, and he and his spokesman did not say if the new offer extended to Hekmatyar or Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. Both are wanted by the United States. Karzai set up a reconciliation commission in 2005 in the hope of persuading rebels to put down their weapons. Officials say around 2,000 low-level Taliban and other militants have signed up.
The Taliban has in the past two years redoubled its insurgency, which it launched after being removed from government in 2001 for not handing over its Al Qaeda allies after the September 11 attacks on the United States. |