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Afghanistan Will Not "Bribe" Taliban
[Quqnoos] Afghanistan will not "bribe" the Taliban into any deal and will not pay them, Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasul said."We are not going to bribe them to stop fighting. These people need, if they can come on board and drop their guns, they need to live," Rasul said on the sidelines of the Munich security conference on Friday. According to Rasul, Afghanistan needs to provide Taliban fighters who renounce violence "land, agriculture, whatever they need, so they can start to learn and have a proper life. The issue is not to pay them money or bribe them." The Taliban have said they will not enter into any "deal" with the Afghan government or the West to bring peace to Afghanistan, and their fighters will continue to die to achieve a victory. Rasul made clear however that "there are elements within the Taliban -- Pakistani Taliban but some Afghan Taliban -- they have links, closer links with al Qaeda and those people cannot be reintegrated or reconciled so we need to fight them." Rasul praised the improved relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, saying "our priority will be improving relations with neighbours in regional cooperation because we cannot solve the issue of fighting against terrorism and extremism only in Afghanistan." Posted by: Fred 2010-02-07 |
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