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Spanner in the works
Although Pakistan has denied the
accusation that recent arrests of important Taliban leaders in
Karachi and elsewhere were in any way aimed at destroying any
old or new communication channels yet the former UN envoy to
Afghanistan Kai Eide has alleged that the Pak moves have
provoked the Taliban to recoil from the ongoing talks. Speaking
to BBC's Lyse Doucet on Friday at his home outside the Norwegian
capital Oslo, he confirmed publicly for the first time that
secret talks with Taliban had begun in 2009 and involved
face-to-face parleys in Dubai and elsewhere. At one place in the
interview, partly reproduced in video format on BBC's web site,
the ex-diplomat said: "The effect of the arrests, in total,
certainly, was negative on our possibilities to continue the
political process that we saw as so necessary at that particular
juncture." Being his first interview after ending the two-year
term in Kabul this month, it partly showed that at least certain
members of Taliban movement were now open to discussing a
negotiated end to war and giving America an honourable exit out
of it.
The outgoing UN envoy, whose
tenure was marked by controversy over a deeply tainted
presidential election, said he hoped the upcoming peace jirga
called by President Hamid Karzai in Kabul would help build the
kind of agreement necessary to reach a consensus on the way
forward. US officials, however, continue to confound the
situation by making odd statements. Friday's newspapers, for
example, quoted CIA chief Leon Panetta as having said that al-Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden and his close lieutenant Ayman al-Zuwahiri
might still be hiding somewhere in Pakistan. Regardless of the
exact whereabouts of top al-Qaeda leaders, the secret talks,
possibility of an honourable exit and arrests of high-profile
Taliban leaders add to common Pakistani's confusion regarding
the role of militants and the truth about military operations. |
