Kabul lashes out over prospective Taliban-US talks

The Afghan government today lashed out at US efforts to broker peace with the Taliban, suspending crucial security talks with Washington and threatening to boycott prospective contacts with the insurgents in Qatar.
Kabul issued two strongly worded statements threatening to sabotage US efforts to start talks with the Taliban, just one day after its foes opened an office for dialogue in the tiny Gulf emirate.
With the US-led NATO combat mission due to end next year, US officials are determined to resume talks with the Taliban after tentative contacts limited to a prisoner swap collapsed last year.
But President Hamid Karzai, who has headed the US-backed Afghan government since a 2001 US-led invasion brought down the Taliban opposes bilateral US-Taliban talks.

Today, he broke off ongoing Afghan-US talks on an agreement that would allow Washington to maintain soldiers in Afghanistan after a NATO combat mission ends next year.
Hopes of peace were given a further reality check when the Taliban claimed an overnight rocket attack that killed four US troops at the largest US-led military base in Afghanistan.

In response to the talks suspension, US President Barack Obama said he always expected "friction" at Afghan reconciliation talks but voiced hope that "despite those challenges the process will proceed".
But Karzai's spokesman Aimal Faizi told AFP there was a "contradiction between what the US government says and what it does regarding Afghanistan peace talks".

He said the row centred on the Taliban office calling itself the "Islamic Emirate Of Afghanistan" -- the formal name of its 1996-2001 government -- on the grounds that no such thing existed, officials said.
A follow-up statement from Kabul threatening to boycott prospective talks in Qatar unless they were "Afghan-led" exposed a wider rift and outright criticised the US involvement.
"The latest developments show that foreign hands are behind the Taliban's Qatar office and, unless they are purely Afghan-led, the High Peace Council will not participate in talks," it said.
The High Peace Council is the government body in charge of leading peace efforts with the Taliban.

"The opening of Taliban office in Qatar, the way it was opened and messages it contained, contradicts the guarantees given by the US to Afghanistan," the statement said.