Karzai concerned over role in Afghan peace talks: official

KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai is concerned over being sidelined in US efforts to bring Taliban insurgents to the negotiating table, a government official said on Thursday.

The hardline Islamists announced this week that they planned to open an overseas political office, a move seen as a precursor to talks to end the long and bloody war in Afghanistan.

A senior official in Karzai’s administration told AFP that the Western-backed leader was unhappy over the process as it had not involved his government.

“Any peace process without Afghanistan’s government in the lead is meaningless,” the official said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“The US officials that we are in contact with say that once the office is set up and talks gets underway the lead will be given to Afghanistan’s government. Without that no talks could succeed,” he told AFP.

“But so far, the Afghan government has not been involved.”

On Wednesday Karzai’s office said it “agrees with the negotiations between US and Taliban that will end up in creating an office for Taliban in Qatar”.

But the government official said it was essential that the Afghan government played a lead role in any peace talks.

“We have said we agree with talks between Taliban and the United States. We have not said that we support this.

“We only support a peace process that is led by the Afghan government.”

The Taliban have said their counterpart in any peace talks would be Washington and its Western allies, excluding Karzai’s administration. The US and Nato have some 130,000 troops fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

The Islamists have also demanded the release of Taliban prisoners held at the US-run detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday Washington was “prepared to support” a proposed overseas Taliban office that backed an Afghan-led reconciliation process provided it met US and Afghan standards.

“With regard to Guantanamo… no decisions have been made with regard to any releases,” Nuland told reporters.

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Iran military warns US aircraft carrier away from Gulf

TEHRAN: A US aircraft carrier currently deployed in the Middle East should “not return” to its base in the Gulf, the head of Iran’s armed forces declared Tuesday, adding there would be no repeat warning.

“We advise and insist that this warship not return to its former base in the Persian Gulf,” Brigadier General Ataollah Salehi told reporters, according to the armed forces website.

“We don’t have the intention of repeating our warning, and we warn only once,” he was quoted as saying.

The warning came just one day after Iran’s navy completed 10 days of manoeuvres at the entrance to the Gulf with the test-firing of three missiles designed to sink warships.

The aircraft carrier Salehi was referring to was the USS John C. Stennis, one of the US navy’s biggest vessels.

The US vessel last week passed through the Strait heading east across the Gulf of Oman and through a zone where the Iranian navy was holding its manoeuvres.

The US Defence Department said the passage was “routine”.

The United States keeps at least one aircraft carrier in or near the Gulf at all times, on rotations of weeks or months. It maintains the base of its Fifth Fleet in the Gulf state of Bahrain.

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Jordan hosts Israelis, Palestinians in rare meeting

AMMAN: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators gathered in the Jordanian capital Amman on Tuesday for their first face-to-face meeting in 16 months but both sides insisted full-blown talks remained some way off.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who was to host the meeting between Israel’s chief negotiator Yitzhak Molcho and his Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erakat, said it was a “serious” bid to help relaunch moribund peace talks.

Quartet envoy Tony Blair was also to attend the session, along with other officials of the grouping, made up of the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.

“It is a serious effort to find a common ground between the two sides and help restart direct peace talks,” said Jordanian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Kayed, whose country has a 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

“All sides should invest in this opportunity and help create the right environment for the success of this effort through refraining from unilateral and provocative actions.”

Senior Israeli cabinet minister Dan Meridor, who holds the intelligence portfolio and is also deputy prime minister, told public radio that the meeting is “a positive development.”

He said the meeting did not in itself constitute a return to direct talks, but expressed hope it would be a springboard which would “allow the Palestinians to return to negotiations.

“We were not asked to make declarations at the preliminary talks,” he said, indicating that only in the context of actual negotiations would Israel lay out its positions.

Erakat made the same point in an interview with Voice of Palestine radio.

“This meeting will be devoted to discussing the possibility of making a breakthrough that could lead to the resumption of negotiations. Therefore, it will not mark the resumption of negotiations,” he said.

He told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah that Israel should not waste the rare opportunity of a face-to-face meeting.

“This is a valuable opportunity for peace and Israel shouldn’t waste it and once again be the reason for the failure of efforts by the international community, by the Quartet and by Jordan, to resume the negotiations,” Erakat said.

Should Tuesday’s meeting end without progress, a committee of officials from the Palestinian leadership will look into the available options and “present its recommendations to president (Mahmud) Abbas within the next few days,” he said.

Direct talks ground to a halt in September 2010, when an Israeli freeze on new West Bank construction expired and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to renew it.

Abbas has said he will not hold talks without a freeze on settlement building and agreement on a clear framework for talks based on 1967 lines.

The Quartet has been trying to draw the two sides back to the negotiating table, asking each to submit comprehensive proposals on territory and security.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that the United States “welcomes and supports this positive development”.

“We are hopeful that this direct exchange can help move us forward on the pathway proposed by the Quartet,” she said in a statement.

“The need for a lasting peace is more urgent than ever. The status quo is not sustainable and the parties must act boldly to advance the cause of peace.”

But the meeting sparked an angry reaction from the Hamas movement which has controlled the Gaza Strip since ousting Abbas’s forces in 2007 and had been inching towards a reconciliation deal with the Palestinian leadership.

“We demand a boycott of this meeting,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP. “Going to such a meeting is only betting on failure.”

The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was also strongly critical of the meeting, calling it a “fatal error” which would force the Palestinians back into another pointless waiting game.

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