Karzai in touch with Taliban for peace in Afghanistan
Wednesday, 25-Aug-2004

Islamabad, August 25 (AFP) -- Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he has been in touch with a senior Taliban official ahead of crucial polls in Afghanistan and will meet him "soon", reported Pakistani newspapers on Wednesday.

Karzai told Pakistani newspaper editors here at the end of his two-day visit on Tuesday that he was in contact with former Taliban foreign minister Wakeel Ahmed Mutawakil, reported the Dawn daily.

Karzai and Mutawakil, considered a moderate in the the hardline regime, discussed ideas on how to strengthen peace in Afghanistan, said Dawn.

"I will have a meeting with him soon," Dawn quoted the Afghan president as telling the Pakistani journalists. He gave no date.

The fundamentalist militia was ousted in US-led military operations in late 2001 in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on the United States which Washington blamed on Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, who was sheltered by Talibans spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Both Omar and bin Laden have so far eluded a nearly three year manhunt by thousands of US troops in Afghanistan. Most intelligence agencies believe bin Laden has been moving between hideouts along the mountainous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Karzai has long maintained that moderate Taliban who had no blood on their hands should play a role in the post-Taliban administrations.

"They are the sons of the soil, they are most welcome to stay and work in Afghanistan," he told the Pakistani editors.

He was also reported to have said they could register to vote in October 9 elections, the first time Afghans will choose their own president.

They can "make money, get married, stand in elections," he said.

However he made it clear that some 50 to 100 Taliban who had committed "heinous crimes" were not welcome.

"They will be apprehended and tried," he said.

Taliban insurgents operating mainly in the ethnic Pashtun belt in south and southeastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border, have attacked election offices, killed electoral workers and vowed to disrupt the polls.

Karzai said he wants Afghan clerics to be in parliament like Pakistans pro-Taliban Islamist leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman, from the Pakistans six-party Islamist alliance which swept to victory in North West Frontier Province and holds the balance of power in the federal parliament.

"I want our Taliban and our mullahs (clerics) to come and do the same," Dawn quoted Karzai saying.

"It is really unfair that the mullahs of our neighbours are getting voted (in) and our mullahs are getting blown up and are killing themselves and having a miserable life.

"They should also enjoy a good life, as others are doing."