KABUL, March 10: Five Taliban detainees held at the US Guantanamo Bay military prison have agreed to be transferred to Qatar, a move Afghanistan believes will boost a nascent reconciliation process, according to President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman.

The transfer idea is part of US efforts to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table to avoid prolonged instability in Afghanistan after foreign combat troops leave the country at the end of 2014.

“We are hopeful this will be a positive step towards peace efforts,” President Karzai’s spokesman Aimal Faizi said on Saturday, adding the Taliban detainees would be reunited with their families in Qatar if the transfer did take place.

It would be one of a series of good-faith measures that could set in motion the first substantial political negotiations on the conflict in Afghanistan since the Taliban government was toppled in 2001 in a US-led invasion. A year after it was unveiled, the Obama administration’s peace initiative may soon offer the United States a historic opportunity to broker an end to a war thatbegan as the response to the Sept 11, 2001, Al Qaeda attacks on the United States.

But the peace drive also presents risks for President Barack Obama. He faces the potential for political fallout months before apresidential election, as his government considers backing an arrangement that would give some degree of power to the Taliban.

Despite months of covert diplomacy, it remains unclear whether the prisoner transfer will go ahead. Doubts are growing about whether the Taliban leadership is willing to weather possible opposition from junior and more hard-core members who appearto oppose negotiations.

Mr Karzai’s top aide, Ibrahim Spinzada, visited the Guantanamo facility this week to secure approval from the five Taliban prisoners to be moved to Qatar.

Karzai’s government has demanded that the five former senior members of the Taliban government, held at Guantanamo Bay for a decade, give their consent before they are transferred to the small Gulf state where they would be under Qatar’s custody.

US officials hope the peace initiative will gain enough traction to enable President Obama to announce the establishment of full-fledged political talks between the Karzai government and the Taliban at a Nato summit in May.

That would mark a major victory for the White House and might ease some of the anxiety created by Nato nations’ plans to gradually pull out most of their troops by the end of 2014, leaving an inexperienced Afghan military and fragile government toface a still-formidable militia.—Reuters