Talks with Taliban possible: Gates

The Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily Asharq Al-Awsat, quoting informed Afghan sources, said on Tuesday the three-day talks were held under Saudi auspices in the holy city of Makkah.It said the talks, aimed at “stopping the violence” in Afghanistan, were held during the final days of Ramazan, which ended on Sept 29. The negotiators moved on to Islamabad on Sunday, the paper said.

They included Mullah Mohammad Tayeb Agha, who was the chief in Kandahar of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and his spokesman before the Taliban’s ouster from power by the US-led invasion of 2001, and Omar’s “foreign minister”, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkel.

It transpired during the talks that the Taliban leader is “no longer an ally of Al-Qaeda,” Asharq Al-Awsat quoted a source close to the talks as saying.

The report came one day after the US-backed Afghan government said it was hoping for peace talks with the Taliban but denied a US news report that a first round of negotiations took place in Makkah between Sept 24 and 27.

A spokesman for the Taliban also dismissed the report. The Saudi government has so far not commented on the reports about the purported talks.

Afghan religious scholars visited Saudi Arabia during Ramazan and attended a dinner with King Abdullah but there were no negotiations with the Taliban, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said on Monday.

The government did, however, want such talks in order to find a way to end a Taliban-led insurgency, spokesman Homayun Hamidzada told AFP, reiterating a statement made by Karzai last week.

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahed, said the movement had “not had any talks or negotiations with the government, neither in Saudi nor anywhere else.”

Karzai told reporters last week that Afghan envoys had made repeated trips to Saudi Arabia and to Pakistan to facilitate negotiations but nothing had been finalised.

Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries that recognised the Taliban regime. The others were Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for former premier Nawaz Sharif said Sharif was willing to broker talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

The offer came after a Pakistani newspaper reported that Sharif, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia, is helping to seek a settlement between the Taliban and Karzai’s regime.