The Taliban's leaders will decide soon about joining talks with the Afghan government, a spokesman said today.
"I cannot say a word regarding these peace talks. The Taliban leadership will soon decide whether to take part in these peace talks," Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf said.
Taliban fighters are to be offered a share of a $500 million fund and jobs if they lay down their arms, cut their links to al-Qaeda and support the Afghanistan government led by President Hamid Karzai, an international conference in London agreed yesterday.
However, the decision to offer the money – $140 million of it to be given over in the next year – has prompted charges from Afghan groups, including some women’s organisations, who fear a return of the Taliban to a place of influence in the Afghan government, that the international community is trying to bribe extremists.
The rank-and-file fighters will be offered a cash payment, a job and a guarantee they will not be arrested by Afghan or foreign military forces, if they agree to stop fighting. The scheme has been kick-started by a $50 million donation from the Japanese government.
United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton, speaking as the one-day Lancaster House conference attended by 70 countries drew to a close, said the peace and reconciliation trust fund was designed to bring “disaffected Taliban back into society, so long as they renounce violence and agree to abide by Afghanistan’s constitution”.
Mr Karzai said: “We must reach out to all of our countrymen, especially our disenchanted brothers who are not part of al-Qaeda.” He said he would call a council of tribal leaders to discuss national reconciliation and that Taliban members would be invited, although he would not talk to al-Qaeda, he emphasised.
However, the offer was immediately rejected by the Taliban, which said: “The warmongering rulers under the leadership of US president Barack Obama and British prime minister Gordon Brown want to deceive the people of the world by holding the London conference to show that people still support them.”
However, last night Reuters reported an unnamed United Nations official as saying its outgoing special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, held secret talks in early January with members of the Taliban’s leadership in Dubai to discuss the possibility of them laying down their arms. Mr Eide last night refused to comment on the report.
“They requested a meeting to talk about talks. They want protection, to be able to come out in public. They don’t want to vanish into places like Bagram,” the official said.
Foreign donors are insisting that Mr Karzai stamps out rampant corruption. He has accepted, under pressure, that a new force under international supervision will be set up to investigate abuses in Afghanistan’s civil and military administration. In return, the country will get $1.6 billion in debt relief.
British foreign secretary David Miliband said the Afghan government would take control of security within five years, although Mr Karzai said he would need international financial backing over 15 years if the threat posed by al-Qaeda was to be stopped.
Under the plans signed yesterday, Afghanistan’s national army will grow to 171,000 by October 2011, while the changeover in security control from international to local forces will begin to take place by the end of this year, or the beginning of 2011.
