January 07, 2009	Wednesday	Muharram 09, 1430

KABUL, Jan 6: Afghanistan’s Taliban said on Tuesday that Kabul had called for peace talks with the militants because it and its foreign allies had been weakened by heavy battlefield losses.

The Taliban who call themselves the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan boasted in a statement of their success in fighting Afghan and international troops in 2008 and vowed to continue the campaign.

“Mujahedeen (fighters) of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have inflicted heavy defeat on the invading forces and their puppets on the military, political and social fronts,” it said, referring to Kabul and its allies.

It said it considered the “deceitful” calls for peace talks to be the “result of very strong mujahedeen attacks, causing heavy casualties to the invading forces”. But it dismissed the moves as without value, adding they would not deter the Taliban effort.

In a bid to bring peace to his country, President Hamid Karzai has offered negotiations to Taliban militants who agree to lay down their weapons and accept the Afghan constitution.

The Taliban statement added that the US campaign to convince more countries to send more troops to Afghanistan had failed, showing Washington was “more and more isolated in the world”. There are about 70,000 international troops in Afghanistan, about half of them from the United States, to help the government fight the insurgency and rebuild a war-shattered nation.

Military commanders have long called for more troops but only the United States has announced a significant boost, pledging 20-30,000 more soldiers this year.

While the number of Taliban attacks, most of them bombings, jumped in 2008, officials say the insurgents have been unable to make significant advances while the Afghan security forces have grown in number and capacity.

The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001 and are fighting to regain power and re-establish a nation run according to strict Islamic laws.—AFP