Karzai Offers Passage to Taliban Leader for Talks In Order To Stem His Rising Unpopularity In Afghanistan

By JOHN F. BURNS

Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, said Sunday that he would guarantee the safety of the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar if Mr. Omar agreed to negotiate for a peaceful settlement of the worsening conflict in the country.

Mr. Omar, a fugitive with a $10 million American bounty on his head, has been in hiding since the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001.

At a news conference in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Mr. Karzai coupled his offer of safe passage to Mr. Omar with a warning to the Western nations that support his government, saying that if they opposed an assurance of safety for Mr. Omar they would have to remove Mr. Karzai as president or withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.

Bush administration officials on Sunday were skeptical of the proposal, although they did not reject it outright.

Mr. Karzai’s offer added a new element to his appeal in recent months for the Taliban to open talks to end the seven years of fighting since the Taliban government was ousted by a United States-led coalition.

But he told the news conference that there was a long way to go before a safety guarantee for Mr. Omar would become a practical issue.

“Right now, I have to hear it from the Taliban leadership, that they are willing to have peace in Afghanistan,” he said, according to Reuters. “They must prove themselves.”

He added, “If I say I want protection for Mullah Omar, the international community has two choices: remove me, or leave if they disagree.”

Discussion of the possibility of talks with the Taliban, or at least with some of the factions of the insurgency, has quickened in recent months. The issue has been broached by President-elect Barack Obama and by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took over two weeks ago as head of the United States Central Command, which has responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

General Petraeus has said that one element of the counterinsurgency strategy he oversaw as the top United States commander in Iraq that might be applicable in Afghanistan is the outreach to what he has described as “reconcilables” among the insurgents, who have gained ground rapidly in the past year.

But American commanders have warned that the lessons of Iraq will not be readily transferable to Afghanistan because of the widely different nature of the wars. For one thing, the Taliban, though composed of different factions and leaders with rival ambitions, have shown no readiness to engage in talks.

No Taliban leader of stature has responded positively to Mr. Karzai’s appeals for talks, and statements attributed to Mr. Omar, and to other major Taliban figures, have rejected talks for any purpose other than ensuring the departure of the 65,000 foreign troops, about half of them Americans.

Mr. Karzai’s offer of a safety guarantee to Mr. Omar even in the face of Western opposition appeared to hint at differences between the Afghan leader and the West on potential peace talks.

His five-year term ends next year, and he faces what is likely to be a contentious bid to win re-election. Western diplomats in Kabul say that his government is deeply corrupt and ineffectual, and that his popular support has plunged as the war worsens and poverty has increased.

Mr. Karzai has recently toughened his tone when speaking of the American-led coalition in ways that appear to have been aimed at gaining wider support at home.

Among other things, he has demanded that the coalition make more measured use of air power to reduce civilian casualties from bomb and missile attacks. With his warning that he would guarantee Mr. Omar’s safety, he appeared to have taken one step further in marking his distance from the coalition.