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发帖数: 901 | 1 Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday that initial three-way talks
between the United States, Afghanistan and the Taliban have begun.
"There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there
have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there
have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including
the Taliban," Karzai told the Wall Street Journal in an interview Wednesday,
ahead of his arrival Thursday in Pakistan.
The Obama administration has made little secret of its efforts to engage in
preliminary talks with the Taliban to explore ways to wind down the American
military involvement in Afghanistan. Obama has announced the U.S. will draw
down its troops there by the end of 2014.
The White House gave at least tacit approval to the Taliban opening an
office or quasi-embassy in the Qatari capital of Doha in order to facilitate
discussions."The president has made clear that we would support and
participate in Afghan-led reconciliation efforts," said White House
spokesman Jay Carney on January 3rd, when asked about the Taliban's
announced plans to open an office.
U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman (pictured above
) has also been conducting a whirlwind--albeit low-profile--series of
shuttle diplomacy consultations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Doha and other
Persian Gulf countries to try to facilitate initial Taliban talks.
Karzai has previously complained that the United States was shutting him out
of the talks, however. And a former Afghan government advisor told Yahoo
News Saturday that the United States was negotiating with a moderate faction
of the Taliban unlikely to be able to deliver the Taliban hardliners.
"The [Taliban] group the U.S. is talking to has no clout," the Afghan
advisor told Yahoo News on condition of anonymity Saturday. The Taliban
group that has set up an office in Qatar are "moderate diplomats," he said.
Other South Asia analysts acknowledge that while that may be the case, the
preliminary discussions are still useful for exploring ways to achieve a
negotiated resolution to the Afghan conflict, which few believe can be
solved by military force alone.
"This is the first stage," said Moeed Yusuf, a South Asia expert with the U.
S. Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan conflict management center created by
Congress, in an interview with Yahoo News Thursday. "We are talking about
talking right now. By definition, you have people who can't deliver
completely. ...Right now, you don't need Mullah Omar."
All the parties -- the Taliban, United States, Afghanistan and Pakistan--"
know that nobody can win this outright militarily," he continued. "So you're
looking at a stalemate. The U.S. wants out, the Taliban wants in. It makes
sense and gives legitimacy" to preliminary efforts to see if a deal can be
reached. "That is what we see right now."
Still, he cautioned, the talks are "very preliminary" and "nobody should be
holding their breath that tomorrow there will be a peace deal signed and
agreed on." | s*********8
发帖数: 901 | 2 Technically, it stopped in 2009 from 2001 (8 years?). 08 actually deserves
the Bomb Prize |
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