KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said he is suspending
efforts to hold peace talks with the Afghan Taliban and will focus
instead on dialogue with neighbouring Pakistan.
He said he had
made the decision after the killing of the former Afghan president
Burhanuddin Rabbani by a suicide bomber purporting to be a Taliban
peace emissary.
Speaking in Kabul, Mr Karzai told a group of
religious leaders that there were no partners for dialogue among the
Taliban and it was not possible to find the Taliban leader, Mullah
Omar.
Meanwhile, the United States has said that attempts to
set a fresh course with Pakistan are being hobbled by bad options and
bureaucratic tensions.
In the wake of a blunt and public
accusation by the top US military officer that Pakistani intelligence
supported a militant attack on the US Embassy in Kabul, officials at
the Pentagon, State Department and White House are urgently debating an
array of unattractive choices.
Washington desperately wants to
tighten the screws on the Haqqani network, a militant group US
officials say was supported by Pakistan’s powerful ISI intelligence
agency in the embassy attack and in other violence that threatens a
smooth US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Despite mounting exasperation in Washington, dramatic change in US policy looks unlikely in the short term toward Pakistan.
"I
don’t see that we have a comprehensive new strategy on Pakistan in the
works," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who advised the
highest levels of the Obama administration on regional policy.
"I think we need one, or at least we need to reshape the one we have." Online
