Karzai welcomes Obama’s truce call toward Taliban

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Monday, March 09, 2009

AFGHANISTAN President Hamid Karzai has welcomed his United States
(U.S.) counterpart, Barack Obama’s, call to identify moderate elements
of the Taliban and encourage them to reconcile with the Afghan
government.

Obama’s call "was good news because this has been the stand of the
Afghan government", the Associated Press (AP) quoted Karzai as telling
a gymnasium full of Afghan women during a speech to commemorate
International Women’s Day.

Obama said in an interview with The New York Times published yesterday
that there might be opportunities to reach out to moderates in the
Taliban, but the situation in Afghanistan is more complicated than the
challenges the American military faced in Iraq.

"There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the
Pakistani region", Obama said, while cautioning that solutions in
Afghanistan will be complicated.

U.S. troops were able to persuade Sunni Moslem insurgents in Iraq to
cooperate in some instances because they had been alienated by the
tactics of al-Qaeda terrorists.

Karzai warned that there are Taliban fighters who are beyond
reconciliation – those who have joined with al-Qaeda, for instance. But
he said talks should go forward "with those who are afraid to come back
to their country, or who feel they have no choice but to stay with the
Taliban for various reasons. They are welcome".

Obama cautioned that Afghanistan is a less-governed region than Iraq
with a history of fierce independence among tribes, creating a tough
set of circumstances for the United States to deal with.

The American leader last month ordered 17,000 more troops to
Afghanistan to bolster the record of 38,000 American forces already in
the country. Obama has promised to increase the U.S. focus on
Afghanistan and away from Iraq, as the U.S. begins to draw down its
forces there.

In the latest violence, a roadside blast killed a North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO) service member and wounded two U.S. coalition
members in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, the NATO-led force said. The
alliance did not disclose the troops’ nationalities or the exact
location of the attack, but the majority of troops in eastern
Afghanistan are American.

Another roadside blast in central Ghazni province hit a police vehicle,
killing six policemen and wounding another six officers, said Ismail
Jahangir, the spokesman for the provincial governor.

A joint Afghan-coalition patrol, meanwhile, killed two Afghan policemen
late on Friday who opened fire on their team in north-eastern Kapisa
province, the coalition said in a statement yesterday.

The joint patrol, which was on foot, attempted to identify themselves
as friendly forces to the police without success, the statement said.
"In self-defense, the patrol returned fire killing two individuals", it
said.

The string of deaths continues an upward spike in violence that has
spread throughout Afghanistan in the past three years even as Obama’s
administration is trying to come up with a new approach to dealing with
the Afghan war.

In a separate development, Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Ali Babacan, has
said there was a "risk" that Obama would recognise the massacre of
Armenians a century ago as genocide.

Babacan, in an interview with the NTV television channel, said that
such a move would only impede efforts to reconcile Turkey and Armenia.

Obama, who is expected to visit Turkey in April, said several times
during his election campaign that he would recognise the 1915-1917
massacres under the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

The United States has previously condemned the killings while not
calling them genocide to avoid tensions with Turkey, a NATO member and
key Middle East ally.

"I still see a risk", Babacan said. "Mr Obama made the promise five
times in a row", he added.

He added, however, that "the new American administration understands
Turkey’s sensibilities better today" and called on the United States
not to interfere in the dispute between the neighbours.

"It would not be rational for a third country to take a position on
this topic. A bad step by the United States would only worsen the
process" of reconciliation between Armenia and Turkey.

The two countries offer starkly different accounts of the events and
the dispute has been a major obstacle in relations between Ankara and
Yerevan.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million people died between 1915 and 1917 in
orchestrated killings as the Ottoman Empire fell apart. More than 20
countries have recognised the killings as genocide.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that between 300,000 and
500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when
Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided
with invading Russian troops.

U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, announced during a visit to
Ankara on Saturday that Obama would visit Turkey "within the next month
or so". The visit is expected in April.