Afghanistan denies Karzai’s talks with Haqqani

KABUL, June 28: Afghanistan’s government angrily dismissed as baseless on Monday a media report that President Hamid Karzai had held a face-to-face meeting with an Al Qaeda-linked Taliban leader in Kabul.

Mr Karzai’s spokesman said the report on Al Jazeera television on Sunday was part of a conspiracy to undermine a government-initiated peace plan aimed at ending almost nine years of war.

Al Jazeera said Mr Karzai had met Sirajuddin Haqqani, who heads the Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, at his palace in the Afghan capital as a prelude to peace talks.

“The report is totally baseless. It is a lie and there is no truth in it,” Mr Karzai’s spokesman Waheed Omar told reporters.

“We believe this is part of the same campaign to undermine the peace process and undermine the process that we are going to start very soon,” he said, referring to plans by Mr Karzai to hold talks with the Taliban.

Taliban wishing to join any peace plan must renounce violence, accept the Afghan constitution, and rescind ties with “international terrorist groups,” Mr Omar said.

Al Jazeera reported that a meeting between Mr Karzai and the militant leader had recently taken place in Kabul mediated by Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the head of its intelligence services, Lt-Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha.

Pakistani military spokesman Maj-Gen Athar Abbas also dismissed the report, telling AFP in Islamabad: “These reports are baseless and unfounded.”

He said “the chief of army staff was scheduled to go to Kabul to attend a meeting of the Tripartite Commission on Monday, but this meeting was postponed.”—AFP

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