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| Afghanistan |
| Taliban Denies Secret Talks with Eide |
| 2010-03-26 |
| [Quqnoos] Taliban militants have denied holding secret meetings with Kai Eide, the former UN envoy to Afghanistan, in a statement Dated March 22, the statement by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan said it "categorically refutes the irresponsible remarks of Kai Eide," and vowed to continue fighting until the "unconditional withdrawal" of US-led forces. Eide said in a March 19 interview with the BBC that he had been holding secret talks with Taliban leaders for about a year, which lasted until almost the end of his tenure in Kabul last month. In the interview, Eide said the recent arrests of Taliban leaders had stopped a secret channel of communications, which had had a "negative" impact on efforts to achieve a political solution to the Afghan war. He was referring to the arrest in Pakistan of the Taliban's No 2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, and other Taliban leaders. But in its statement, picked up by the SITE monitoring service, the Taliban said: "The Islamic of Emirate of Afghanistan does not believe in any political surreptitious contacts nor has it had such contacts." It called the reports of contacts in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and the Maldives as "baseless propaganda," and said reports that Baradar had taken part in the meetings "have no basis." |
| Posted by:Fred |