Tweet
By MARC CHAMPION in Istanbul and MARIA ABI-HABIB in Kabul
The Taliban assassinated the police chief of southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province, while a Turkish official said Turkey is in negotiations to host an office for the Taliban to use as a base for conducting peace talks with the international community.
A Taliban suicide bomber killed Gen. Khan Mohammad, police chief of southern Kandahar province, where a substantial part of the surge of 30,000 U.S. forces was deployed last year.
"We had warned him to quit the job, otherwise we'd kill him. He didn't listen to us," Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi said.
Mr. Ahmadi said he was too busy to comment on plans for the establishment of a Taliban office in Turkey.
The idea of setting up a permanent Taliban office was first floated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on a visit to Turkey in December.
More recently, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he had discussed the idea with the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, the government body that is handling reconciliation efforts.
Mr. Davutoglu said at the time that Turkey was open to hosting a Taliban office, but that no proposal had been made.
On Friday, Ibrahim Kalin, foreign policy adviser to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the opening of an office in Istanbul was under negotiation. Mr. Kalin didn't specify with whom Turkey was negotiating, and stressed that a deal might not materialize.
The U.S. and other nations engaged in Afghanistan are seeking an end to a conflict that shows little sign of resolution or of driving the insurgents to the negotiating table, more than nine years after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban out of Kabul in 2001.
President Barack Obama said Friday that the U.S. would pull a "significant" number of troops out of Afghanistan this summer, although he declined to give a number, the Associated Press reported.
Most known Taliban leaders are on a United Nations blacklist that bans international travel and freezes their assets. But officials in Ankara say that shouldn't present a significant problem.
"I assume there would be some kind of consensus on such a step," and that exemptions to the travel restrictions would be allowed, said a Turkish diplomat familiar with the matter.
Turkey, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's sole Muslim member-state, has non-combat troops in Afghanistan. Ankara's offer to host an office for the Taliban is the latest in a string of mediation efforts it has made in the region.
Those efforts have had mixed success and on occasion have put Ankara in conflict with the U.S. over tactics. Last year, for example, Turkey's negotiation of a deal with Iran on its nuclear program triggered tension, when the U.S. said the deal wasn't sufficient. Turkey then voted against U.S.-backed sanctions on Iran at the United Nations Security Council.
Mr. Karzai has angered many of his government allies with public overtures to the Taliban, describing them as disgruntled "brothers" and pleading with the insurgency to join peace talks. Mr. Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun, as are most Taliban members. Many of the country's ethnic-Tajik officials say they believe peace talks with the Taliban are futile.
Kandahar province has seen a steady stream of violence this year, with insurgents attacking a police compound there last week, killing six Afghan security personnel in a four-hour gun battle. Earlier this month, anti-Western protests killed at least ten people and wounding over 80.
So far this year, 122 international troops have died in Afghanistan with 16 of them killed in Kandahar, according to icasualties.org, an independent monitoring site.
—Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
The Taliban assassinated the police chief of southern Afghanistan's Kandahar province, while a Turkish official said Turkey is in negotiations to host an office for the Taliban to use as a base for conducting peace talks with the international community.
A Taliban suicide bomber killed Gen. Khan Mohammad, police chief of southern Kandahar province, where a substantial part of the surge of 30,000 U.S. forces was deployed last year.
"We had warned him to quit the job, otherwise we'd kill him. He didn't listen to us," Taliban spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi said.
Mr. Ahmadi said he was too busy to comment on plans for the establishment of a Taliban office in Turkey.
The idea of setting up a permanent Taliban office was first floated by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on a visit to Turkey in December.
More recently, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he had discussed the idea with the head of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, the government body that is handling reconciliation efforts.
Mr. Davutoglu said at the time that Turkey was open to hosting a Taliban office, but that no proposal had been made.
On Friday, Ibrahim Kalin, foreign policy adviser to Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said the opening of an office in Istanbul was under negotiation. Mr. Kalin didn't specify with whom Turkey was negotiating, and stressed that a deal might not materialize.
The U.S. and other nations engaged in Afghanistan are seeking an end to a conflict that shows little sign of resolution or of driving the insurgents to the negotiating table, more than nine years after U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban out of Kabul in 2001.
President Barack Obama said Friday that the U.S. would pull a "significant" number of troops out of Afghanistan this summer, although he declined to give a number, the Associated Press reported.
Most known Taliban leaders are on a United Nations blacklist that bans international travel and freezes their assets. But officials in Ankara say that shouldn't present a significant problem.
"I assume there would be some kind of consensus on such a step," and that exemptions to the travel restrictions would be allowed, said a Turkish diplomat familiar with the matter.
Turkey, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's sole Muslim member-state, has non-combat troops in Afghanistan. Ankara's offer to host an office for the Taliban is the latest in a string of mediation efforts it has made in the region.
Those efforts have had mixed success and on occasion have put Ankara in conflict with the U.S. over tactics. Last year, for example, Turkey's negotiation of a deal with Iran on its nuclear program triggered tension, when the U.S. said the deal wasn't sufficient. Turkey then voted against U.S.-backed sanctions on Iran at the United Nations Security Council.
Mr. Karzai has angered many of his government allies with public overtures to the Taliban, describing them as disgruntled "brothers" and pleading with the insurgency to join peace talks. Mr. Karzai is an ethnic Pashtun, as are most Taliban members. Many of the country's ethnic-Tajik officials say they believe peace talks with the Taliban are futile.
Kandahar province has seen a steady stream of violence this year, with insurgents attacking a police compound there last week, killing six Afghan security personnel in a four-hour gun battle. Earlier this month, anti-Western protests killed at least ten people and wounding over 80.
So far this year, 122 international troops have died in Afghanistan with 16 of them killed in Kandahar, according to icasualties.org, an independent monitoring site.
—Habib Khan Totakhil contributed to this article.
Comment