Afghan Taliban to attend crisis group’s conference in Doha

The council expressed serious concern at the threats posed by the Taliban, al-Qaeda and affiliates of ISIS terror group to local people, defense and security forces and the “international presence” in Afghanistan.

The demands came a day after representatives of the Taleban and former Afghan officials met in Qatar at a conference to resolve the war organised by the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, a Nobel peace prize-winning crisis group.

The third round of the quadrilateral talks is scheduled for February 6 in Pakistan to revive the stalled talks and work out a roadmap to bring the Taliban outfit to the negotiating table and find a political solution to Afghanistan’s lingering conflict.

The conference is not the part of official peace process which recently restarted after being derailed in July after theTaliban’s founder Mullah Mohammad Omar had been dead since early 2013.

Taliban sources said Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in a written message to the conference, accepted the Taliban as a political opposition and said his government was ready to hold direct peace talks. Pugwash a year ago organized similar talks that were also attended by Afghan officials. He was Mullah Omar’s deputy and took over when his death was revealed.

“No talks would deliver unless and until Taliban top leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor and Sarajudin Haqqani attend it”, General Raziq told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

Some Afghan parliamentarians and civil society representatives would also participate in the event, albeit in a private capacity, another analyst said.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan according to a harsh version of Islamic law from 1996 until the U.S.-led invasion launched after the September 11 attacks.

But the insurgent group is being widely condemned for last week’s suicide attack against a mini bus carrying staff of the country’s biggest television station, Tolo news. Members of the group have remained in the oil and gas-rich country, however. The news channel had been in the crosshairs of the Taliban ever since it gave substantial coverage to Taliban atrocities during the siege and brief fall of Kunduz a year ago, after which the Taliban designated TOLO News a “military target”.

Naqib Ahmad Atal, the provincial governor’s spokesman, said local authorities had given businessmen a guarantee of their security, but he could not say when the market would re-open.