Karzai warns of ‘plot’ against Afghan peace
AFGHANISTAN: Afghan President Hamid Karzai Tuesday accused foreign
countries of plotting against his war-weary nation's peace programme,
saying all negotiations should take place under his administration.
Without pointing a finger at any particular country, Karzai said he
had told the US government during a recent visit to Washington that “no
foreign party must try to take the Afghan peace process in its hand”.
All negotiations with Taliban insurgents should take place through
the government-appointed High Peace Council, but unnamed “foreigners”
had tried to sidestep the council, Karzai said. Karzai made the comments
in a long diversion during a speech to a water management conference in
Kabul, but it was unclear why he raised the issue or who exactly he was
targeting.
A senior official told AFP that Karzai was referring “to foreign and
internal elements who are trying to tell the Taliban to hold talks with
other groups and encouraging political groups to hold talks with the
Taliban”. The plan was to weaken the Afghan government, he said, adding
that the “foreign elements” were from both Western and regional
countries.
Afghan Defence Minister Bismillah Khan Muhammadi is on a five-day
visit to neighbouring Pakistan, where he has met the army chief of
staff, General Ashfaq Kayani.
Afghan-Pakistani relations are understood to have improved recently
despite years of suspicion and mutual accusations of Taliban violence
plaguing both countries.
“Any effort to conduct peace talks individually is not an effort for
peace but it's a plot by the foreigners, aimed at weakening
Afghanistan,” Karzai said.
Washington began tentative moves towards peace with the Taliban a
year ago. But the militia broke off the talks a few months later,
apparently over the failure of the United States to free Taliban
prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Taliban are in the process of opening a political office in Qatar
to facilitate talks, but the US ambassador to Afghanistan said earlier
this month that a peace process “hasn't even really begun”.
AFP
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