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Karzai accuses foreign countries of 'plotting' against Afghan peace
[Dawn] Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused foreign countries on Tuesday of plotting against his war-weary nation's peace programme, saying all negotiations should take place under his administration.

Without pointing a finger at any particular country, Karzai said he had told the US government during a recent visit to Washington that "no foreign party must try to take the Afghan peace process in its hand".

All negotiations with Taliban insurgents should take place through the government-appointed High Peace Council, but unnamed "foreigners" had tried to sidestep the council, Karzai said.

Karzai made the comments in a long diversion during a speech to a water management conference in Kabul, but it was unclear why he raised the issue or who exactly he was targeting.

A senior official told AFP that Karzai was referring "to foreign and internal elements who are trying to tell the Taliban to hold talks with other groups and encouraging political groups to hold talks with the Taliban".

The plan was to weaken the Afghan government, he said, adding that the "foreign elements" were from both Western and regional countries.

Afghan Defence Minister Bismillah Khan Muhammadi is on a five-day visit to neighbouring Pakistan, where he has met Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani.

Afghan-Pakistani relations are understood to have improved recently despite years of suspicion and mutual accusations of Taliban violence plaguing both countries.

"Any effort to conduct peace talks individually is not an effort for peace but it's a plot by the foreigners, aimed at weakening Afghanistan," Karzai said.

Posted by: Fred 2013-01-30
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=361218