News
Monday, June 20, 2011
US in ‘very preliminary’ talks with Taliban: Gates
* US defence secretary says military pressure key to talks with Taliban
* Says real reconciliation talks unlikely to make headway until at least this winter
WASHINGTON: The United States is in “very preliminary” talks with Afghan Taliban, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview aired on Sunday.
It could be months before efforts to broker a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban bear fruit, Gates told CNN on Sunday. Gates, who steps down at the end of the month, said there had been contacts between US and the Taliban in recent weeks, headed by the State Department. “There’s been outreach on the – on the part of a number of countries, including the United States. I would say that these contacts are very preliminary at this point,” he said.
The comments from the outgoing US defence chief were aired a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the US was in contact with the Taliban, a striking public acknowledgment of a peace initiative that has been cloaked with secrecy. Karzai said an Afghan push toward peace talks, after nearly a decade of war, had not yet reached a stage where the government and insurgents were meeting, but their representatives had been in touch.
“Peace talks are going on with the Taliban. The foreign military and especially the United States itself is going ahead with these negotiations,” Karzai said in a speech in Kabul. The comments come as President Barack Obama prepares to announce the size and nature of the initial US drawdown from Afghanistan nearly 10 years after the September 11 attacks. Obama, who has increased the size of the US force by about 65,000 soldiers since he took office in early 2009, is hoping to move definitively toward ending the war as he faces sharp fiscal pressures and eyes his 2012 reelection campaign.
But Gates cautioned the peace initiative would be fraught with challenges, including locating members of the Taliban who could credibly speak for its leadership. “My own view is that real reconciliation talks are not likely to be able to make any substantive headway until at least this winter,” he said. “I think that the Taliban have to feel themselves under military pressure, and begin to believe that they can’t win before they’re willing to have a serious conversation.”
US commanders are hailing success in pushing the Taliban out of key parts of southern Afghanistan, but violence has surged and the insurgency has become even more fierce along Afghanistan’s eastern border with Pakistan.
“I think the first question we have is who represents Mullah Omar,” Gates said, adding “We don’t want to end up having a conversation at some point with somebody who is basically a free-lancer.” He said the US long has said that “a political outcome is the way most of these wars end. The question is when and if they’re ready to talk seriously about meeting the redlines that President Karzai, and that the coalition have laid down, including totally disavowing al Qaeda.” agencies
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk