Looks like a follow up from yesterdays expulsion of two UN and EU functionaries
BRITISH spies held secret talks with senior Taliban figures in Afghanistan earlier this year, a newspaper has reported. Officers from Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, had held peace talks with up to a dozen Taliban officials, according to The Daily Telegraph, which cited an unidentified intelligence source.
"The SIS officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taliban, with some of them coming across as some sort of armed militia,'' The Telegraph quoted the source as saying. "The British would provide mentoring for the Taliban.''
Although Britain and its NATO allies are engaged in a fierce campaign to root out resurgent Taliban militants from Afghanistan's south, both British and Afghan officials have voiced increasing interest in trying to talk the Taliban into laying down their arms and persuading them to join the Government. Two weeks ago British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told politicians the Taliban could win a role in the Afghanistan's future if they renounced violence - although he explicitly ruled out direct talks with ex-Taliban fighters.
And yesterday, the Afghan Government expelled two senior European diplomats accused of holding unauthorised meetings with the insurgents.
The Telegraph said the meetings were held up to half a dozen times on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand province, the southern region that has seen the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan this year. The meetings took place in the presence of Afghan officials in compounds secured by the British military, the paper said.
It quoted its source as saying that the British spies believed the insurgents engaged in the talks to be "important motivating figures inside the Taliban". |