Australia: Taliban suspend peace talks with US

The Sydney Morning Herald

Taliban suspend peace talks with US
Emma Graham-Harrison, Kabul

THE Taliban have suspended peace talks in Qatar with the US, complicating the Obama administration's plans for an orderly exit from Afghanistan.

The move leaves the west's political strategy for Afghanistan in tatters days after a US soldier's massacre of 16 civilians raised questions about the future of the military campaign.

Within minutes of the insurgents' announcement, President Hamid Karzai delivered another blow to western plans by calling for US troops to leave Afghan villages immediately. In a statement following a meeting with US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in Kabul, Mr Karzai said he would like to see foreign efforts shift to economic assistance and reconstruction instead.
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If that request is met, it could spell the end for the current coalition military strategy of pushing out insurgents and winning over the civilian populations village by village.

The Obama administration said yesterday it was pressing on with trying to reconcile Afghanistan's government and Taliban forces willing to renounce terrorism.

''There is no likely resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan without a political resolution,'' White House press secretary Jay Carney said. ''Those who would be reconciled need to lay down their arms, renounce al-Qaeda [and] promise to abide by the Afghan constitution. And we continue to support that process.''

The Taliban's decision last year to open an office in Qatar raised hopes that, after years of false starts and dead ends, there might be a real prospect of at least coming to the negotiating table with the insurgent group.

Hope of a decisive military victory over the Taliban has long been abandoned, so negotiations are a key part of western efforts to organise a withdrawal of combat troops in 2014 without leaving Afghanistan to slide back into civil war.

The Taliban statement did not go into the precise details of the US demands that prompted the Taliban to abandon talks, but it described Washington as ''shaky, erratic and vague'' and rejected any discussion with the government in Kabul as pointless.

''They turned their backs on their promises and started initiating baseless propaganda portraying the envoys of the Islamic Emirate [the Taliban's name for their regime] as having commenced multilateral negotiations,'' the statement said.

However, it did leave open the possibility that dialogue could resume again in the future.

Lawmakers in Afghanistan, meanwhile, are outraged that the US flew the soldier suspected of gunning down 16 civilians last Sunday to Kuwait on Wednesday night. They demand the US Army staff sergeant be tried in Afghanistan.

The soldier had been drinking alcohol - a violation of military rules in combat zones - and suffering from stress related to his fourth combat tour and tensions with his wife, a senior US official revealed.

''When it all comes out, it will be a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues - he just snapped,'' the official said. As details emerged about possible reasons behind the shootings, a US official told The New York Times the military was preparing to move the sergeant to a US prison as early as this weekend, just a day after he was flown to the detention site in Kuwait.

The sergeant's sudden transfer to the US is the result of a behind-the-scenes diplomatic furore in Kuwait, which learnt of the sergeant's move to a US base on its territory from news reports before the US government could alert Kuwaiti authorities to the move, the official said.

''When they learnt about it, the Kuwaitis blew a gasket and wanted him out of there,'' the official said.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/taliban-suspend-peace-talks-with-us-20120316-1val1.html