Political solution to Afghan conflict necessary, concedes Obama

WASHINGTON, June 28: US President Barack Obama has said that all efforts to arrange a peace deal between the Afghan government and Taliban militants should be viewed with both scepticism and openness.

Speaking after the Group of 20 meeting in Toronto on Sunday evening, Mr Obama conceded that a political solution to the Afghan conflict was necessary and suggested that elements of the Taliban insurgency could be part of these negotiations.

Asked if the talks that Pakistan was reportedly brokering between the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai held promise, Mr Obama gave a long answer, explaining how the Taliban movement was not homogenous and included those who were reconcilable as well as those who were not.

“The Taliban is a blend of hard-core ideologues, tribal leaders, kids that basically sign up because it’s the best job available to them,” he noted.

“Not all of them are going to be thinking the same way about the Afghan government, about the future of Afghanistan. And so we’re going to have to sort through how these talks take place.”

Mr Obama said he believed that Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s peace Jirga was a useful step and so was the conference Mr Karzai planned to hold in Kabul soon.

Similarly, “conversations between the Afghan government and the Pakistani government, building trust between those two governments is a useful step”, he said.

“I think to the extent that we can get all the regional players to recognise that it is in everybody’s interests that this region between Pakistan and Afghanistan are not used to launch terrorist attacks – that will be a useful step,” said the US president.

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