The Afghan government is ready for peace talks with the Taliban, but will not accept preconditions demanded by them such as the withdrawal of all foreign troops, a presidential spokesman said on Tuesday. Afghan President Hamid Karzai repeated his call to Taliban to enter peace negotiations in a speech he made on the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. But the Taliban said they would only accept talks if all of the roughly 50,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan left first, a new constitution was accepted and Islamic law imposed.
“The Afghan government is not open to negotiations with any preconditions, we are not going to have any preconditions,” presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told a news conference. The only promise the government would give the Taliban ahead of any talks was a guarantee for the safety of negotiators. The Taliban said they were sticking to their demands.
“Our position is very clear - the withdrawal of the foreign troops is a must, also the imposition of real Islamic law and the re-writing of the constitution,” Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf told Reuters by telephone from an unknown location. “As long as foreign forces are in Afghanistan, negotiations are useless,” he said. “We don’t want to talk to foreigners, we want to talk to Afghans to bring peace and security ... As long as foreign forces are present, Afghanistan will never be peaceful.”