Karzai out to sabotage Qatar process: Taliban

Spokesman rejects Afghan president’s remarks on power sharing.

ISLAMABAD:

The Afghan Taliban have strongly rejected President Karzai’s remarks of a possible power sharing scheme between the current Kabul government and the Taliban. Such comments from the “incompetent president” will hamper the peace process, the Taliban spokesman told the media on Tuesday.

Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid issued this hard-hitting statement in response to Karzai’s press conference with the British Prime Minister David Cameron in Kabul on June 29. Karzai had shared plans for sharing one or two provinces with the Taliban.

Mujahid called such statements mere propaganda and described the president as weak and power-hungry. The Taliban dismissed the statement as a ploy by the Afghan leader to prolong his corrupt government and kill the Qatar peace process.

Mullah Omer has time and again reiterated his resolve to preserve Afghanistan’s sovereignty and no one would be allowed to carry forward with their dirty designs to such malignant end, the Taliban spokesman said.

Pakistan

Afghan Deputy Foreign Minister Ershad Ahmadi claimed on Tuesday that Pakistan’s national security adviser, Sartaj Aziz, floated the idea of a power-sharing arrangement between Kabul and the Taliban in Friday’s meeting with the Afghan ambassador, Umer Daudzai.

Karzai had also mentioned rumours of the Pakistani government trying to reach a power sharing agreement in his press conference with PM Cameron.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 3^rd, 2013.