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| Afghanistan |
| Isaf Strongly Reacts to Karzai Operation Ban |
| 2011-01-06 |
| [Tolo News] After an official said President Karzai stalls military operations against the Taliban, Isaf forces strongly reacted against the comments. In an interview with TOLOnews, General Josef Blotz Isaf's Spokesperson highlighted that there is no reason to downturn military offensives against the Taliban, but much more pressures needed to be applied on them. Blotz said Afghan government should have an initiative in talks with the Taliban, and it should be the Taliban to renounce violence and lay down arms. Isaf declined to have any sort of information about pressures on counter-insurgency operations applied by President Karzai. Blotz said the operations will not decrease at any cost. "We believe strongly that it is very important to keep the pressure on the Taliban, because we started to have success, started to make progress by putting pressure on the insurgency. So we must not now rot it down and remove the pressure in order to facilitate whatever negotiations, Blotz said. He said social economic reasons make the Islamic fascisti join the Taliban side and carry out attacks against Afghan and foreign forces. "The majority of the Islamic fascisti choose the wrong side, because of social economic reasons. They are not, I would say, Islamic fascisti of very strong convictions, so it's not a monolithic bloc we are seeing; it is more a syndicate of different groups with different motivations and different aims and goals," he said. A top Afghan official had told TOLOnews on condition of anonymity that it has been times President Karzai has been preventing troops from launching military operations against the Taliban. But Karzai's Spokesperson underlined that the President is only against offensives that claim lives of civilians, conducted without coordination and operations that can damage the Afghan grinding of the peace processor. |
| Posted by:Fred |