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| Afghanistan |
| Afghan Talks in France Bolster Hopes of Peace Process |
| 2012-12-21 |
| [An Nahar] Representatives of Afghanistan's warring factions met here Thursday for two days of landmark talks that diplomats hope will bolster a fledgling grinding of the peace processor in the war-torn country. For the first time since a U.S.-led bombing campaign drove the Taliban from power in 2001, senior figures in the Islamist movement sat down with officials from the government and other opposition forces for a round table discussion on the country's future that was brokered by a French think tank. The organizers, the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), confirmed the closed-door talks had got underway at The talks come against a background of accelerating efforts to draw the Taliban and other opponents of 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... into negotiations on how Afghanistan will be run after Western troops withdraw at the end of 2014. The alternative, diplomats fear, is a multi-sided civil war that will make more than a decade of Western intervention in the country look like a colossal waste of human life and hundreds of billions of dollars. Karzai's government has drawn up a road-map for peace which involves persuading the Taliban and other cut-thoat groups to agree a ceasefire as a prelude to becoming peaceful players in the country's nascent democracy. As a first step in that direction, Karzai's administration has been attempting to secure the release of top Taliban prisoners held by neighboring Pakistain. Progress on the prisoner issue is seen as vital if the Taliban is to be drawn into direct negotiations with the government. Karzai's roadmap envisages these taking place in Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... next year with both Pak and U.S. involvement. To date the Taliban has refused to negotiate with the government, which it regards as a puppet of the United States, and initial discussions with American officials were suspended in March. But the presence here of senior figures Shahabuddin Dilawar and Naeem Wardak has been seen as a sign that the Islamist group is contemplating going beyond exploratory discussions. Dilawar is a former deputy head of the Taliban's Supreme Court who had to be granted a U.N. special exemption to come to La Belle France because he is usually subject to a travel ban under international sanctions on the organization. Karzai's roadmap for peace explicitly envisages Taliban leaders being brought into a power-sharing government and/or being appointed to posts such as provincial governors in their ethnic Pashtun strongholds in the south and east of the country. |
| Posted by:Fred |