The Obama administration has launched a post-election push to restart moribund peace talks with the Taliban, despite resistance from the US military, mixed signals from Pakistan and outright refusal by the militants themselves, according to US officials.
Senior White House and State Department officials reiterated the administration’s negotiating position, including its willingness to exchange prisoners with the Taliban, to a reluctant Defence Department at a meeting of national security deputies two weeks ago, Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The same message was conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Pakistan’s foreign minister Monday in Brussels, along with an appeal for Pakistani cooperation with a separate negotiating effort by the Afghan government.
Douglas Lute, President Obama’s top adviser for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was scheduled to meet with Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani on Tuesday in Brussels, where Clinton is attending a NATO meeting.
The paper said relations with Pakistan had slowly improved this year, capped by a hard-won deal to reopen transit points from Pakistan for the resupply of US forces in Afghanistan. Both sides have emphasised improvements in counterterrorism coordination, while tacitly ignoring Pakistan’s demand for a stop to US drone strikes in Pakistani territory. But many in the US military’s command headquarters in Afghanistan remain doubtful of Pakistan’s willingness to use its relationship with the Taliban to help forge a political solution to the war and are reluctant to include Pakistan in any of their planning for the drawdown of US combat forces or for a follow-on military presence after 2014.
As a result, an administration official said, Pakistan had been getting an inconsistent message about how serious the administration was about peace talks and a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan of up to 10,000 troops.
After more than a year of sporadic talks, the Taliban cut off the US negotiating channel in March, accusing the administration of unilaterally changing the terms of a potential prisoner swap. Even if the Taliban had wanted to re-engage, officials said, administration policy had been largely frozen because of presidential campaign concerns and the military’s concentration on the summer fighting season in Afghanistan.
“Now we’ve had the election, the fighting season is over” in Afghanistan, “and we’re starting to get little reports here and there that the Taliban are coming around,” the administration official told the paper.
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