Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Monday said that Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar can run for president in the elections next year.
In the interview with a German newspaper at the Kabul presidential palace, Karzai said Mullah Omar could become a presidential candidate, giving Afghans the opportunity to “vote for or against him.”
“The Afghan constitution is valid for all Afghans and the Taliban should also benefit from it,” Karzai said in the interview.
Karzai had visited Qatar on Sunday to discuss regional peace. The Afghan government recently allowed the Taliban to open an office in Qatar on the condition that the outfit breaks association with al-Qaeda and abandone terrorism.
The Afghan president further added that the real problem in the fight against terrorism lay in Pakistan and had not been addressed as yet.
Talking about the polls in Afghanistan, Karzai said that 2014 represented a turning point for Afghanistan, a year in which the US would pull its combat troops from Afghanistan.
Mullah Muhammad Omar is an Afghan Taliban supreme commander. Reclusive Omar had a $10 million bounty on his head from the US and is a talismanic figure for insurgents in the 10-year war against foreign and Afghan troops.