KABUL: Kabul and Washington reaffirmed yesterday that they would seek peace with the Taliban despite attacks on a CIA base and the Afghan presidency, repairing a row over the Islamists’ office in Qatar.
US President Barack Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai held a 90-minute conference call to revive early efforts to start peace talks as Nato troops prepare to withdraw in 2014 after more than 12 years of fighting against the Taliban.
The level of violence still raging in Afghanistan was highlighted when the Taliban launched an assault on Tuesday in the heart of Kabul in which three security guards and all five assailants were killed.
Gunmen and bombers using fake Nato identification attacked an entrance to the Afghan presidential palace and a nearby building known to house a CIA base in one of the most brazen assaults in Kabul since Karzai narrowly escaped assassination in April 2008.
Tentative steps towards talks were wrecked last week when a new Taliban office in Qatar provoked anger from Afghanistan and the US.
Karzai refused to send representatives to Qatar and pulled out of separate talks on a security agreement with the US that would allow Washington to keep some troops in Afghanistan after 2014.
Washington launched an intense diplomatic effort to pacify Karzai, with telephone calls and dispatching US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, James Dobbins, for talks.
“Both presidents talked about the security agreement between Afghanistan and the US, the peace process and the Taliban office in Qatar,” Karzai’s office said after the call with Obama late on Tuesday.
Obama appeared to have persuaded Karzai to renew peace efforts.
The two leaders agreed that “an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation process is the surest way to end violence and ensure lasting stability in Afghanistan and the region,” the White House said.
“They reiterated their support for an office in Doha for the purpose of negotiations between the (Afghan government’s) High Peace Council and authorised representatives of the Taliban.”
Dobbins said on Monday that Washington had been “outraged” at how the Taliban opened the office, which had been intended to help foster a peace deal to end the decade-long war in Afghanistan.
Kabul insists the Taliban’s office in the Gulf state must only be used for direct talks with Karzai’s appointed negotiators.
Karzai has previously opposed direct contacts between the Taliban and the US, which focused on securing a prisoner exchange until the rebels suspended talks last year.
Dobbins on Tuesday flew to Islamabad and held talks with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on efforts to launch negotiations with the Taliban, which have long maintained rear bases in Pakistan.
Sharif assured Dobbins of “Pakistan’s full commitment to an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace process,” his office said.
A senior Pakistani official said that “Karzai thought he would be left out” of peace talks but Islamabad “strongly believed there will be nothing of the sort”.
Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan has also released a video message, pledging to follow any decision taken by Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar with regard to talks with the Americans.
About 100,000 foreign combat troops, 68,000 of them American, are due to exit Afghanistan by the end of 2014. AFP
