Abdullah slams Karzai’s remarks on peace talks

KABUL (NCA) chief, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, on Wednesday slammed President Hamid Karzai’s recent remarks that peace negotiation through different channels was a plot of foreigners.

Karzai on Tuesday made it clear that only the High Peace Council was authorised to hold reconciliation talks with militants, saying that foreign plots in the guise of negotiations had been thwarted.

Addressing a conference on Afghanistan’s water resource management in Kabul, the president urged Afghan powerbrokers not to engage in such meetings if genuine government representatives were sidelined.

“Our politicians must realise the fact the peace process will yield the desired result only if we stand united and the negotiations are led by the council,” the president said. 

But the NCA chairman, hitting out at Karzai, and said the Afghans wanted peace without any compromise on their dignity and justice. The process, therefore, would be initiated when Taliban announced their willingness for talks with the government, he added.

Addressing an Eid-i-Milad ceremony, the former foreign minister suggested that all political parties and civil society representatives should be involved in the reconciliation process.

“No system can survive in the presence of such a mindset. The president must not be allowed to play with the future of the people,” he stressed, while calling for greater clarity in the reconciliation campaign.

A member of the coalition, Syed Ali Kazimi, asked the government to acknowledge peace efforts of all political forces, including opposition groups, civil society and women. Their role could not be called a conspiracy, he argued.

Afghanistan had suffered a lot at the hands of politicians who convert non-issues into issues in their own interest, he alleged, saying the government, if it could not restore peace, should let the people decide their future themselves.

The government, which no programme or intention to stabilise the country, was trying to prevent other political forces from promoting peace, said another member of the coalition, Noorul Haq Uloomi.

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