[Iran Press TV Latest] US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday ruled out the likelihood of talks with Taliban hardliners who she termed as "the really bad guys." "We're not going to talk to the really bad guys because the really bad guys are not ever going to renounce al-Qaeda and renounce violence and agree to re-enter society," Clinton said in an interview with National Public Radio Broadcast.
"That is not going to happen with people like Mullah Omar and the like," she said in reference to the Taliban leader in Afghanistan, who remains at large almost nine years after the US-led invasion of the violence-weary nation.
Clinton was in London on Thursday to attend a global conference on Afghanistan, where the participants backed a multimillion-dollar fund to support Afghan President Hamid Karzai's plan to reintegrate militants who lay down their arms.
She admitted to fears among Afghan women of dealing with the Taliban whose pursuit of extremism deprived women of education, employment and traveling on their own between 1996 and 2001.
But Clinton tried to soothe the concerns, saying the "current government or any foreseeable government" would not practice the same violation of women's rights.
Afghans continue to struggle with the occupation as militancy keeps taking its toll on civilians, while drug production and trafficking remain prosperous businesses and wide-spread corruption continues to plague the government and its armed forces.
The United States and its allies plan to pour an additional 40,000 troops into Afghanistan to quash Taliban militants.
Clinton defended more boots in the field as a way to back up political efforts aimed at making peace with the enemy.
"Only a surge of military forces alone without any effort on the political side is not likely to succeed; only an effort to make peace with your enemies without the strength to back it up is not going to succeed," she said.