We are unofficially talking with Taliban, admits Karzai

WASHINGTON - Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has said unofficial negotiations are taking place with the Taliban, who are like “kids who have run away from the family”, even as he hoped the US won’t abandon the country.

“We have been talking to the Taliban as countryman to countryman, talk in that manner. Not as a regular official contact with the Taliban with a fixed address, but rather unofficial personal contacts have been going on for quite some time,” Karzai told CNN’s “Larry King Live” programme in an interview.

“I hope the US and our other allies will help us through good means so we can reassure the Afghan people that this partnership is staying and that Afghanistan will emerge out of this current transition into a better country, a better economy and a more stronger, effective state,” he said.

Karzai said the High Peace Council, an initiative headed by former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, has been tasked with boosting negotiations with the Taliban.

“Now that the peace council has come into existence, these talks will go on, and will go on officially and more rigorously, I hope,” the Afghan president said.

“The Taliban, those of whom who are Afghans and the sons of Afghan soil, who have been driven to violence by various factors beyond their control and beyond ours caused by circumstances in Afghanistan, we want them to come back to their country.

“They are like kids who have run away… from the family. The family should try to bring them back and give them better discipline and incorporate them back into their family and society. President Rabbani assuming chairmanship today of the peace council in exactly that spirit.”

However, the Afghan government was not willing to talk with groups like Al Qaeda, he said.

“But those who are a part of Al Qaeda and the other terrorist networks who are ideologically against us or who are working against Afghanistan knowingly and out of the purpose of hatred and enmity - those of course we have to work against.”

Karzai says his relations with his US counterpart Barack Obama were “very good”.

“The relation with the US government is generally good,” he said.

“There is a strategic relationship between us, partnerships toward an objective - that’s security for us and security for the US and the rest of the world,” Karzai said.

Karzai, however, said the Afghan people fear they would be abandoned again like earlier when they had fought the Soviets.

“When we defeated communism and the Soviets, the international community supported us. But after their defeat we were abandoned and forgotten immediately, including by the US,” he said.

Obama sent an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan this year, but plans to completely withdraw forces by July 2011. The withdrawal announcement has prompted Karzai to ask his American counterpart to let the US forces remain.