Washington, August 26: General David Petraeus said that the Obama administration backs Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s initiative to talk peace with Taliban figures who break with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
“The US is very much in the information loop and in a couple of cases has helped in a sense, but is not doing the negotiation,” said Petraeus in a Wednesday interview with the Fox News Channel.
“Actually in a couple of isolated cases there’s been a degree of facilitation, if you will,” he said.
The US commander said that Karzai has ordered measures to reintegrate Taliban members into the society by paying them “10 dollars a day.”
He added that provincial governors and local leaders accepted the plan.
Peace with the Taliban is a goal for Afghan and US governments and they will create conditions to archive it, Petraeus said.
The US commander says some groups of Taliban have laid down their weapons to join the Afghan society in the last two days.
Petraeus acknowledged that the US forces even safeguard the movement of government officials to meetings with Taliban.
Karzai has set a list of conditions for Taliban to join the future Afghan society.
The Afghan president says the militants should accept the constitution, lay down weapons, cut ties with al-Qaeda and become productive members of society.
Some analysts consider this as part of Karzai’s attempts to stabilize the country by striking deals with militant groups.
US officials have also been pressing, covertly as well as overtly, for opportunities to hold negotiations with the Taliban, reportedly using Pakistan as an intermediary.
“We sat down across the table in Iraq from individuals who had our blood on their hands. That’s what was done in Northern Ireland. It’s what’s done in just about any insurgency as you get to the end stages of it,” Petraeus said.
“If there’s a willingness of those at the high-levels to do that, and they do indeed agree to the safeguards. … then certainly you would want to reconcile,” he said.
Both the US and the UK had previously insisted that they would never negotiate with terrorists, vowing to uproot the Taliban and their operatives in the region.
Some 140,000 US-led troops are currently stationed in Afghanistan. A further 10,000 are expected to be deployed to the war-ravaged country in the coming weeks.
NATO’s mounting death toll has led to a dramatic decline in public support for the Afghan war across Europe and the US.
——-Agencies