US helped promote talks with Taliban: Gen Petraeus

[pkd]

WASHINGTON: The US commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday said he supported efforts to broker a settlement with the Taliban and that the United States had helped promote dialogue with militants in some “isolated cases”.

In an interview with the Fox News channel, Gen David Petraeus said the Afghan government was leading the effort to open talks with Taliban leaders while the United States closely followed the process.

“The US is very much in the information loop and in a couple of cases has helped in a sense, but is not doing the negotiation,” Gen Petraeus said, according to excerpts of the interview.

“Actually in a couple of isolated cases there’s been a degree of facilitation, if you will,” he said.

The war in Afghanistan would have to end based on a negotiation, like other insurgencies elsewhere, including Iraq, he said. “We sat down across the table in Iraq from individuals who had our blood on their hands. It’s what’s done in just about any insurgency as you get to the end stages of it.”

Top US officials have said repeatedly that attempts to negotiate a deal with militant leaders will likely only succeed once the Taliban sense they have lost the upper hand on the battlefield.

But the commander’s remarks marked a growing willingness by Washington to support a negotiated settlement, provided the militants promise to break links with Al Qaeda and meet other conditions.—Agencies

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[banned]

America is just looking for a way out. Thank you america for making a mess and destroying our security. Afghanistan would have rot and died on its own if left in the hands of Mullahs and sooner or later people would over throw them with the help of forigen aid. But american intervention has made these Mullahs utmost heros of war. The same kind of falsely assumed victory which turned these people into pride of society is happening again at 100x dangerous pace.