Doha: Afghan President Hamid Karzai was set to hold discussions in Qatar on Sunday about the proposed opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf state as a prelude to possible talks on ending more than a decade of war.
Karzai previously opposed such a Qatar venue since he feared that his government would be frozen out of any peace negotiations involving the Islamic extremists and the US.
The militants refuse to have direct contact with the Afghan president, saying he is a puppet of the United States, which supported his rise to power after the military operation to oust the Taliban from Kabul in 2001.
But with US-led NATO combat troops due to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, Karzai agreed to the proposed Taliban office in Doha and is expected to raise the plan in talks with the Emir of Qatar on Sunday.
Any future peace talks still face numerous hurdles before they begin, including confusion over who would represent the Taliban and Karzai’s insistence that his appointees should be at the centre of negotiations.
“We will discuss the peace process, of course, and the opening of an office for the Taliban in Qatar,” presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi told AFP before Karzai left Kabul on Saturday.
“If we want to have talks to bring peace to Afghanistan, the main side must be the Afghan government’s representatives — the High Peace Council, which has members from all the country’s ethnic and political backgrounds,” Faizi added.
Negotiating with the hardline Taliban regime that harboured Al-Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks was for many years anathema to countries in the UN-backed coalition against the militants. But the search for a political settlement became a priority as the insurgency raged on, with Taliban leaders able to fuel violence from safe havens across the border in Pakistan. (PTI)