Kabul, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai said Sunday that a few hundred Taliban fighters have reconciled with the government and suggested militant leader Mullah Omar should “get in touch” if he wanted to talk peace.
In the context of escalating violence, including suicide attacks, the remarks by Karzai in an interview were seen as a significant softening of the government’s previous policy of not negotiating with top leaders of the hard-line militia.
Despite the spike in bloodshed, the U.S.-backed leader said the Taliban’s resistance was fading although he expected suicide attacks to continue in Afghanistan “for a long time.” Karzai said a booming drug trade presented a greater threat to Afghanistan than terrorism and endangered its future.
Omar has been in hiding since U.S.-led forces ousted his fundamentalist Islamic regime four years ago for hosting Osama bin Laden in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Taliban leader has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head and is believed to be leading holdouts in a rebellion that left about 1,600 people dead last year, the most since 2001.
Karzai, 48, who won a five- year term as the war-battered nation’s first democratically elected leader in 2004, invited all Afghans, “Taliban or non-Taliban,” to help rebuild the country, and said that includes Omar.
“If he wants to come, he should get in touch with us,” the president said, indicating he was open to the possibility of talks with the reclusive militia leader despite his most-wanted status.
Karzai said hundreds of Taliban members who are “not associated with terrorism” already have participated in a government reconciliation program.
