Afghanistan will send a team to Qatar for peace talks with the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday, as the US-led NATO coalition launched the final phase of the 12-year war with the last round of security transfers to Afghan forces.
Karzai’s announcement was the first possible step forward in the peace process, that has struggled to achieve results despite many attempts, and is likely to be applauded by his Western backers.
“Afghanistan’s High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to discuss peace talks with the Taliban,” Karzai said in Kabul, referring to the council he formed in late 2010.
“We hope that our brothers the Taliban also understand that the process will move to our country soon,” Karzai said of the group that ruled the country with an iron fist from 1996 to 2001.
There was no immediate comment from the Afghan Taliban.
Karzai said three principles had been created to guide the talks — that having begun in Qatar, they must then immediately be moved to Afghanistan, that they bring about an end to violence and that they must not become a tool for a “third country’s” exploitation of Afghanistan.
Karzai called on the Taliban last month to fight Afghanistan’s enemies in what was widely seen as a swipe against Pakistan days after the neighbours’ security forces clashed on their joint border.
A team of envoys from the Taliban flew to Qatar in early 2012 to open talks with the US government. But the Taliban suspended the talks in March 2012, saying Washington was giving mixed signals on the nascent Afghan reconciliation process.
