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KABUL: Taliban insurgents Thursday denied that they had begun talks with the Afghan government alongside early contacts over negotiations with the United States.
The Taliban “strongly dismiss” the claim made by President Hamid Karzai in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement on the militants' website.
The Taliban said last month that they planned to set up a political office in Qatar ahead of possible formal talks with the United States, and Afghan and US officials have said that exploratory contacts are already underway.
Dismissing Karzai's claim of Afghan involvement as false, Mujahid said no decision had yet been taken to hold talks with what he described as the “puppet” Kabul administration.
In the interview with the Wall Street Journal published Thursday, Karzai said the Afghan government was part of a three-way peace dialogue involving the US and the Taliban.
Kabul has expressed fear of being marginalised as United States officials explore negotiations with the Islamist Taliban, who in turn have said they have no intention of talking to Karzai's US-backed government.
But in the newspaper interview, Karzai said the Afghan government was indeed involved in the dialogue and that most Taliban were “definitively”interested in a peace deal as foreign troops exit.
“There have been contacts between the US government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban,” Karzai was quoted as saying.
“If anyone has held talks with the Karzai government as a representative of the Islamic Emirate, he has been an impostor,” the Taliban statement said.
“There have been such cases before and it is possible that somebody may have again duped this administration.”
In 2010, a man posing as a high-ranking Taliban leader, Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, reportedly met three times with Afghan and Nato officials and received cash payments before it was discovered that he was an imposter.
To build confidence, President Barack Obama's administration has confirmed tentative talks with the Taliban on a possible transfer of five inmates from Guantanamo Bay to Qatar, and on potential local ceasefires with the militia.
The tentative contacts come as the United States and its foreign allies prepare to draw down their combat troop presence and hand full control of Afghanistan's security to Afghan forces by the end of 2014.
The Taliban have often decried Karzai's government as a “puppet regime”propped up by foreign troops and cash, but the president dismissed such talk as rhetoric.
In the interview, he said the Taliban might even accept a peace deal that allows for the long-term presence of US troops.
“There are a lot of people in the Taliban who are the sons of the soil, and who do not want this country, the people of this country, to suffer,” he said.
