Gulf Times: A Taliban office in Doha could “facilitate” talks with the Islamist group, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in an interview with Doha-based Al Jazeera television broadcast yesterday.
Karzai, who held talks on Sunday with HH the Emir, said he was keen on working with the Taliban to help bring about peace in Afghanistan before Nato ends combat operations there next year.
“We never planned to eliminate the Taliban. Not me, not the Afghan people, not the Afghan government,” Karzai told Al Jazeera.
“The moment I was declared the head of the interim government… I declared complete amnesty to Taliban… from the leadership to everybody else,” he said.
“And the plan was to bring them and have them reintegrate into Afghan society like all other Afghans,” he added, referring to the Islamic extremists as “brothers”.
Karzai said his Sunday talks with HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani centred on how Qatar could “facilitate the peace process”.
With US-led Nato combat troops due to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, Karzai recently declared support to the proposed office in Doha.
In the interview with Al Jazeera he said a Taliban office in Doha could pave the way for “direct contacts” and push forward the peace process in Afghanistan.
Any future peace talks still face numerous hurdles before they begin, including confusion over who would represent the Taliban and Karzai’s insistence that his appointees should be at the centre of negotiations.
