ISLAMABAD — A Taliban emissary sat face-to-face last week with a senior Afghan government official responsible for peace talks in a high-level gathering between the adversaries, an official said Saturday.
The encounter at a peace and reconciliation conference in Kyoto, Japan, was a rare and positive sign in faltering attempts to find a peaceful end to the conflict in Afghanistan. It also provided an opportunity for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government to sit down with its enemies — the Taliban and the Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group.
Siddiq Mansour Ansari, a peace activist who was invited to attend the meeting at Kyoto’s Doshisha University, said it was the third peace and reconciliation conference organized by the school but the first time the Taliban had sent an emissary.
The Taliban’s former planning minister, Qari Din Mohammed Hanif, took part in the conference “to explain the policies of the Islamic Emirate,” Taliban spokesman Zabilullah Mujahed said by telephone.
The Afghan government was represented by Mohammed Masoon Stanikzai, a senior member of the government’s High Peace Council, which is responsible for talks with the insurgency. Ansari said the conference was not intended to find a peace settlement but to air ideas and differences.
