Kabul opposes Hekmatyar’s separate talks with Taliban
Hizb-e-Islami chief keen to start his own negotiations with militant group
The Afghan government opposes any separate bid outside its writ for negotiations with the Taliban, a spokeswoman for the Peace Ministry said on Thursday, after a former prime minister announced his intention of starting talks with the group to help bring peace to the war-torn country.
Speaking at a think-tank in Islamabad during his visit to Pakistan on Wednesday, Hizb-e-Islami chief Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — a former warlord who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s and later served as the country’s prime minister — said he had decided to start his own negotiations with the Taliban.
The statement came as peace talks between the Kabul government and the group, which have been underway in Qatar since September, appear to have made no headway. Intra-Afghan talks began on Sept. 12 after a US-Taliban peace deal was signed in late February.
Under the agreement, the US committed to withdraw all foreign forces from Afghanistan by next year’s spring. In return, the Taliban promised to seek reconciliation with the Afghan government.
“Peace is a national process. The government has presented vivid
mechanisms for participation of all political and social strata,” Najia Anwari, the spokeswoman for the Afghan Ministry of Peace, one of the key institutions handling the peace process, told Arab News.
“Similarly, the current government delegation is inclusive. The government’s responsible behavior with this national process leaves no room for individual approach,” she said. An official close to the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) chairman Abdullah Abdullah — Afghanistan’s top envoy for the negotiations between the Kabul government and the Taliban — said that the Qatari authorities, which are hosting the intra-Afghan talks, had accepted Hekmatyar’s bid and even prepared the ground for his visit, but the US, which is facilitating the peace process, had blocked it. The Hizb-e-Islami party leader will possibly be allowed to participate in the next round of talks, as part of a team under the umbrella of the HCNR, but not in his personal or factional capacity, the official said.