October 1, 2007	Monday	Ramazan 18, 1428

KANDAHAR, Sept 30: Taliban on Sunday rejected President Hamid Karzai’s new offers of peace talks, insisting US-led invading troops leave the country first, as violence continued unabated.

President Karzai made his offer on Saturday hours after one of the worst attacks in the Taliban’s near six-year insurgency killed 30 people in Kabul.

It was flatly turned down, as was an offer of government posts if the rebels renounced violence. They said they would “never talk” unless the tens of thousands of US-led invading troops here leave.

“Taliban are not interested in government posts — ministries or anything.

We want the withdrawal of foreign forces and we stand by our position,” Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said, echoing a demand made two weeks ago.

“As long as they have not withdrawn, we’ll never talk with the Kabul administration.” Despite the rejection, Karzai’s spokesman Homayun Hamidzada said on Sunday that the government “knew” there was debate developing among some factions in the Taliban — although not the Al Qaeda-linked ones — about talks.

“Not all of them, not Al Qaeda, but there’s serious debate among some Taliban groups,” he claimed. “We don’t expect something to happen now. This is a process which will take time.” Karzai has already refused the Taliban demand that the nearly 50,000 US-led invading troops leave.

He told journalists again on Saturday, hours after the second-most deadly blast in the city since the Taliban ousted from power by US forces in 2001 that he would not let them go before his war-ravaged nation stood on its own feet.
“We won’t let the foreigners leave until our roads are built, our schools, electricity are built, until our police and army are better,” he said.

Besides military operations, the foreign soldiers are also helping to build the Afghan security forces, extend Kabul’s authority and facilitate reconstruction in a country ruined by war.

Karzai is desperate to end the insurgency, which has claimed around 5,000 lives so far this year, most of them of rebels, compared with about 4,000 last year.

The violence is undercutting costly efforts to rebuild and is eroding public confidence in an administration that has been supported by the world’s leading nations for nearly six years and is still faltering.

In new bloodshed, two Afghan women and a child were killed when Taliban attacked an Afghan army patrol in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, Paktia province spokesman Din Mohammad Darvish said.

International soldiers were called to repel the attack. “Seven Taliban were killed in raids,” Darvish said.

Civilian casualties caused by US-led soldiers in Afghanistan are deeply sensitive, causing outrage inside and outside the country.

In another incident, two police officers were killed on Sunday trying to defuse a bomb outside the troubled southern city of Kandahar, police said.

Two more security officers were wounded, deputy police chief Abdul Hakim Angar said. An Afghan television journalist filming the incident was badly hurt.—AFP