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Talk to Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas: former top Blair aide
Western governments should talk to Islamist extremists including Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to end violence, one of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's closest aides said in comments published Saturday. "It's very difficult for democratic governments to do -- talk to a terrorist movement that's killing your people," Blair's former chief of staff Jonathan Powell he told The Guardian in an interview. "(But) if I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban and I would want to find a channel to Al-Qaeda."
Maybe that's why you're no longer in government ...
Powell, who was in the post throughout Blair's premiership from 1997 to 2007, is seen as having been a key behind-the-scenes figure in talks to bring about an end to sectarian violence in the British province of Northern Ireland. London had been in secret communication with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) since the 1970s, which had been a key factor in eventually securing a peace deal in 1998, he told the newspaper.

He accepted though that "there's nothing to say to Al-Qaeda and they've got nothing to say to us at the moment" and there was also a problem of whom to talk to and about what. "But at some stage you're going to have to come to a political solution as well as a security solution. And that means you need the ability to talk," he added.

The Foreign Office dismissed Powell's suggestion outright. A spokesman told the newspaper: "It is inconceivable that Her Majesty's Government would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with a terrorist organisation like Al-Qaeda."
Posted by: Fred 2008-03-16
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=233614