US officials to test Karzai on Taliban talks

The United States will send a senior official to meet Afghan President Hamid Karzai next week to see whether he agrees to a resumption of preliminary talks with the Taliban, officials said.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that US special regional envoy Marc Grossman would visit Kabul.Grossman will visit several other key regional capitals, and the talks could open with the militia within weeks if Karzai is agreeable, another official said.Washington has consistently said that any talks with the Taliban, which would be key to ending the decade-long war, could only take place with the agreement of, and eventually should be led by, the Afghan government.A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that if Karzai were to agree to a resumption of talks, Washington would seek to move ahead with dialogue.But the official also cautioned that it was not yet clear if Karzai would sign off on such a course of action.The Taliban announced last week that it wanted to set up a political office in the Gulf state of Qatar in a move seen as a precursor to talks with the United States and to relaunching a stalled dialogue.Clinton, after meeting Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani in Washington on Wednesday, hinted at behind-the-scenes momentum towards such a preliminary confidence-building measure.Positive statements from Karzai and the Taliban demonstrate there is support for such discussions for the political office to open in Qatar, Clinton said.The top US diplomat cautioned however that nothing had been decided on the idea of a Qatar office for the Taliban and that Washington and its allies were still in the preliminary stages of testing whether the approach could be successful.The United States reportedly had a tentative deal with the Taliban to open talks last year, which would have seen five detainees freed from the US war on terror camp at Guantanamo Bay and sent to Qatar in return for a renunciation of links to international terrorism by the militia.But the agreement folded amid suggestions that Karzai was opposed to it.We have not made any decisions about releasing any Taliban from Guantanamo, Clinton said.The secretary of state publicly laid down US conditions for a dialogue with the Taliban, which require a renunciation of violence by the hardline militia, a break with Al-Qaeda and support for the Afghan constitution which mandates protection for the rights of women and minorities.I have made it clear to President Karzai that we will work with him, under his leadership, Clinton said.Sheikh Hamad said that Qatar was interested in any opportunity to take any steps that would defuse tensions in South Asia.Many observers in the United States and elsewhere remain skeptical about the prospects for a meaningful dialogue with the Taliban, noting Western leverage may ebb as NATO nations and allies seek to draw down their troops in the next two years.Grossman was expected to visit key regional players next week, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia.