Kai Eide - Negotiations With Taliban

Negotiations With Taliban

In early 2010, Kai Eide put out the word that he had secret exploratory talks with Taliban commanders to discuss peace terms, as emerged end of that month during the International Conference on Afghanistan in London. According to Eide, he met with Regional commanders on the Taliban's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, in Dubai on 8 January 2010. This would have been the first such meeting between the UN and alleged senior members of the Taliban, suggesting that peace talks had revived since exploratory contacts between emissaries of the Kabul government and the Taliban in Saudi Arabia in 2009 broke down. It was not clear how significant a faction had showed up in Dubai or how serious they were. A western official confirmed that there were "indications of splits in the Taliban over the prospect of a settlement". Supporters of former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah predicted that negotiations could fail because the Karzai government was "too weak", and other critics warned that trying to buy off insurgents created a "moral hazard" of rewarding combatants who had killed Western troops and local civilians. Taliban sources denied that there had been such a meeting and dismissed them as "baseless rumors".