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Mullah Omar calls for peace talks, new attacks on foreign troops
 [LATIMES] The reclusive leader of Afghanistan's Taliban said Tuesday that his krazed killer group was willing to begin peace negotiations, even as he urged stepped-up attacks on foreign troops to force them out of the country.In a lengthy and wide-ranging email message, Mullah Mohammad Omar called on Afghans to boycott elections scheduled for early 2014 and urged Afghan police, soldiers and paramilitary personnel to turn their guns on foreign troops -- as well as Afghan government troops cooperating with U.S.-led coalition forces. In a separate development, individual members of the Afghan High Peace Council -- a group appointed by President Hamid Maybe I'll join the TalibanKarzai ... A former Baltimore restaurateur, now 12th and current President of Afghanistan, displacing the legitimate president Rabbani in December 2004. He was installed as the dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001 in a vain attempt to put a Pashtunface on the successor state to the Taliban. After the 2004 presidential election, he was declared president regardless of what the actual vote count was. He won a second, even more dubious, five-year-term after the 2009 presidential election. His grip on reality has been slipping steadily since around 2007, probably from heavy drug use... to negotiate with Taliban elements -- said Tuesday they've held secret talks with the Taliban to try to bring momentum to a grinding of the peace processor that's foundered since its inception. Taliban front man Zabiullah Mujahid said the statements were a deliberate lie designed to upstage his group's important Eid message. "The High Peace Council wants to keep its office open and money flowing, which is why they are spouting such propaganda," Mujahid said. "We don't intend to talk with the puppet Kabul government. We don't have contact with them, not individual talks, not group talks." The one-eyed Omar, who has a $10-million bounty on his head, has made a practice in recent years of distributing a message shortly before Eid al-Fitr, a three-day Islamic holiday celebrating the end of the holy month of Ramadan when devout Mohammedans pray and fast. Omar said in the five-page letter that the Taliban recently set up an office in Doha, the capital of Qatar, to hasten the departure of foreign forces from Afghanistan and to form an inclusive government based on "Islamic principles." "We do not think of monopolizing power," he wrote. "Those who truly love Islam and the country and have commitment to both ... this homeland is theirs." Posted by: Fred 2013-08-07 |
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