Afghan President Hamid Karzai
WASHINGTON: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has confirmed that his government has began informal talks with Taliban “for quite sometime” and hoped that the formation of a peace council will spur these efforts.
“We have been talking to the Taliban as countrymen to countrymen”, Karzai said in an interview to CNN, days after US media had reported that secret high level talks were underway.
“Unofficial talks have been held with Taliban representatives over an extended period. These are not regular official contact with the Taliban with a fixed address, but rather unofficial personal contacts”, Karzai said in the ‘Larry King Live’ show.
Karzai said that the new initiative headed by former President Burhanuddin Rabbani had been tasked to speed up negotiations with the Taliban insurgents.
While, supporting the initiative to open dialogue with the Taliban, the Afghan President said his government would continue to work against groups like Al Qaeda, saying that the Arab dominated group was against Afghanistan.
Describing Taliban as “the sons of Afghan soil” who had been driven to violence by various factors beyond their control, Karzai said “they are like kids who have run away…from the family. The family must try to bring them back”.
“Now that the peace council has come into existence under former president Rabbani, these talks will go on, and will go on officially and more rigorously”, he said.
About his relations with the US, the Afghan President said “there is a strategic relationship …. based on strategic objective – that’s security for us, security for the US and security for the rest of the world”.
In the interview Karzai said fear still lingered among Afghans that the Americans might abandon the country as they had done before after the defeat of the Soviet Union.
-PTI
