Karzai confirms unofficial contacts with Taliban
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai confirmed that "unofficial" contacts with the Taliban have been taking place "for quite some time," CNN reported on Sunday.
"We have been talking to the Taliban as countryman to countryman, talk in that manner," Karzai told CNN's "Larry King Live" program in an interview scheduled to air Monday night. Excerpts of the interview were released Sunday on CNN's website.
"Not as a regular official contact with the Taliban with a fixed address, but rather unofficial personal contacts have been going on for quite some time," Karzai said.
The Washington Post reported last Wednesday that Taliban representatives and the Afghan government had begun secret, high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, following inconclusive meetings hosted by Saudi Arabia that ended more than a year ago.
However, Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Zahir Faqiri rejected the report.
"...currently there is not any meeting between the government and Taliban in Kabul as you mentioned," Faqiri responded to a query in a news conference on Thursday.
Karzai told CNN "The Taliban, those of whom who are Afghans and the sons of Afghan soil, who have been driven to violence by various factors beyond their control and beyond ours caused by circumstances in Afghanistan, we want them to come back to their country."
"They are like kids who have run away ... from the family. The family should try to bring them back and give them better discipline and incorporate them back into their family and society," said the president.
Karzai on Thursday inaugurated the High Council for Peace, a 70-member body established by the government to accelerate peace talks with Taliban militants.
"Now that the peace council has come into existence, these talks will go on, and will go on officially and more rigorously, I hope," Karzai told CNN.
He stressed that the Afghan government will fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaida, saying "Those who are a part of al-Qaida and the other terrorist networks who are ideologically against us or who are working against Afghanistan knowingly and out of the purpose of hatred and enmity -- those of course we have to work against."
"Whether they are against Afghanistan or whether they are al-Qaida and the terrorist war against the United States or our neighbors in Pakistan, those of course cannot be accepted," he said.
He described as "very good" his relations with U.S. President Barack Obama, saying they are in regular contact and had a video conference about five days ago.
"The relation with the U.S. government is generally good," he said. "There is a strategic relationship between us, partnerships toward an objective -- that's security for us and for the United States and the rest of the world."
Meanwhile, the president denied a report that he has been diagnosed as manic-depressive in a book by veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, calling the story "rather funny."
In his book "Obama's Wars," Woodward cited U.S. intelligence reports. "He's on his meds, he's off his meds," Woodward quoted U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry as saying about Karzai.
Karzai said "The only medication that I have taken is an antibiotic called Augmentin" when suffering from a cold two years ago.
The 53-year-old president added that from time to time, he also takes vitamin C, multivitamins and Tylenol, "when I have a headache or when I'm tired."
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