Pakistan Arrests Halt Secret UN Talks With Taliban

(March 19) -- Recent arrests of top Taliban figures have halted secret talks the United Nations had been holding with the insurgents for about a year, the former U.N. chief in Afghanistan said today.

Some of the secret talks involved face-to-face meetings with Taliban members in Dubai and elsewhere, said Kai Eide, who has just stepped down from his post as head of the U.N.'s mission in Afghanistan. It's the first confirmation that such talks were being held.

"The first contact was probably last spring, then of course you moved into the election process where there was a lull in activity, and then communication picked up when the election process was over, and it continued to pick up until a certain moment a few weeks ago," Eide told the BBC in an interview at his home in Norway.

The revelation that such talks had been going on with the Taliban lends credence to a new proposal by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to draw some members of the militant group away from the insurgency and into public life – luring them with jobs and other incentives similar to the way U.S. forces won over some Sunni Muslim militants in Iraq. The secret U.N. talks show that some even high-ranking Taliban officials could be open to negotiating – rather the fighting – an end to the more than 8-year war.

Eide blamed the breakdown of talks on Pakistan's arrest of the Taliban's No. 2 leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and other insurgent figures at a time when negotiations were making progress.

"The effect of [the arrests], in total, certainly, was negative on our possibilities to continue the political process that we saw as so necessary," he said. "The Pakistanis did not play the role that they should have played."

Taliban leaders who are now in Pakistani custody could have played a significant role in negotiating peace in Afghanistan, and the Pakistanis surely must have known that, Eide said. "They must have known who they were, what kind of role they were playing, and you see the result today," he said, referring to how talks have collapsed after the arrests.

Eide said some contact with the Taliban continues through top officials in Karzai's administration, but he wouldn't comment further on those talks because he is not involved in them.

Last month's detention of Baradar -- second in the Taliban only to Mullah Mohammed Omar -- infuriated Karzai, one of the Afghan president's advisers told The Associated Press. The unidentified official said Baradar had been open to negotiating with the Afghan government, and had even "given the green light" to participating in a three-day peace conference Karzai plans to host next month.

But with Baradar behind bars, that cooperation was cut off.

Pakistan has been under U.S. pressure to crack down on Taliban militants on its soil, and last month's raid that netted Baradar in the southern city of Karachi was heralded as a major coup for Pakistani forces. Military officials have boasted success in the recent string of Taliban arrests, and denied the operations had anything to do with secret U.N. negotiations. It was unclear how many people knew about the United Nations' contact with Taliban figures, but Eide said top Pakistani officials were informed.

A Pakistani army spokesman, Gen. Athar Abbas, told the AP today that "reconciliation or talks have nothing to do with the arrest of Baradar. ... Serious arrests are being made continuously."

The secret negotiations involved "senior figures in the Taliban leadership" and "people who have the authority of the Quetta Shura," Eide said. The Quetta Shura is the Taliban's leadership council, which takes its name from the Pakistani city of Quetta where senior insurgent figures are widely believed to have been based. Pakistan denies that the Taliban is still based in Quetta and insists its leaders go back and forth across the border with Afghanistan.

As for the involvement of Mullah Omar himself, Eide told the BBC: "I find it unthinkable that such contact would take place without his knowledge and also without his acceptance."

Now that contacts have broken down, Eide predicted it could take months or even longer to rebuild confidence on both sides.

Eide spoke to the BBC in his first official interview after resigning his two-year post in Afghanistan earlier this month. "The reason why I am commenting on this is, of course, that I have always believed that a political process was absolutely required as an integral part of our strategy," he said.