http://www.theage.com.au/world/taliban-discuss-moneyforpeace-offer-20100129-n45x.html
Taliban discuss money-for-peace offer PAOLA TOTARO, LONDON January 30, 2010 TALIBAN commanders have had secret talks with a special envoy from the United Nations under an international peace plan to pay fighters to lay down their arms. News of the exploratory talks emerged after an international conference held in London on the future of Afghanistan, convened by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The Reuters news agency reported that a meeting between the UN special representative in Afghanistan and regional commanders of the Taliban's leadership council took place in Dubai on January 8. The Guardian confirmed the meeting. Reuters said regional commanders of the Taliban's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, sought a meeting with UN special envoy Kai Eide. ''They requested a meeting to talk about talks,'' a UN official told the news agency. ''They want protection, to be able to come out in public. They don't want to vanish into places like Bagram [a detention centre inside a US air base north of Kabul].'' The talks are the first such interaction between the UN and leading Taliban officials, and in London the news was being interpreted as a significant breakthrough, suggesting that some senior Taliban may be prepared to trust an international organisation to broker a deal. The London conference was aimed at thrashing out a blueprint to guide the transition from a NATO military campaign to an Afghan-led program to end the war and rebuild the nation and its educational, economic and political structures. Australia has become one of the first nations to contribute million of dollars to the global plan to pay Taliban fighters who lay down their arms. More than $25 million has been earmarked as part of a $100 million Australian package pledged at the conference overnight. Foreign affairs ministers from 70 nations converged on the British capital for the one-day meeting. A final communique suggested that the time frame for Afghanistan to take responsibility for security in insecure areas of the country was "within three years". For this to occur, supporting nations will have to fund 171,600 Afghan soldiers and 134,000 policemen by October next year. Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the conference that foreign troops would have to remain in Afghanistan for many more years. ''With regard to training and equipping the Afghan security forces, five to 10 years will be enough,'' he told the BBC. At the conference, Mr Karzai made a clear peace overture to the Taliban. ''We must reach out to all of our countrymen, especially our disenchanted brothers who are not part of al-Qaeda or other terrorist networks, who accept the Afghan constitution,'' the President said. To do that, Mr Karzai announced the creation of a national peace council to oversee the reintegration of the Taliban rank and file, 75 per cent of whom are thought to fight within a few kilometres of their villages for principally local reasons. Afghan Foreign Affairs Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said that as a first step, a grand peace council, or loya jirga, would be convened ''in the next few weeks''. The peace council would be open to tribal elders from across the country, including those tribes that took no part in the 2001 Bonn peace conference because of their links with the Taliban. They were thus excluded from the post-Taliban Afghan state, a decision that European and US officials now concede was a serious mistake. With GUARDIAN [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
