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Obama: I'm ready to start talks with Afghan Taliban
Paul Thompson in Miami9 Mar 2009
President Barack Obama has revealed that he is prepared to open talks with "moderate" elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Despite ordering an extra 17,000 troops to the region, he has signalled he will use diplomacy as a way of bringing an end to the eight-year conflict.
His remarks came after he delivered a blunt assessment of the war during a briefing with reporters on the presidential jet Air Force One.
Asked if he thought the US was winning in Afghanistan, he replied emphatically: "No."
General David McKiernan, the head of US and international forces in Afghanistan, today insisted that the coalition was winning in some parts of the country.
But he added: "There are other areas - large areas in the southern Afghanistan especially but in parts of the east - where we are not winning, where more has to happen along multiple lines of operation in order for anybody by any metric to say that the Afghans are winning or the efforts of the coalition are winning."
His comments echo remarks by Foreign Secretary David Miliband who spoke of a "strategic stalemate" in parts of the country.
President Obama told reporters he was considering applying to Afghanistan an approach that had met with some success when used in Iraq by General David Petraeus, now head of the US Central Command in the region.
He said: "If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of alQaeda in Iraq."
The fragile truce between Iraqi insurgents and US forces led to a fall in the number of deaths of American soldiers.
At the weekend Mr Obama announced 12,000 US troops will leave Iraq by September and the remainder of the combat troops will be out in 18 months.
Mr Obama admitted that the problem might be more complex in Afghanistan where tribal feuds could wreck his reconciliation plans.
But Afghan President Hamid Karzai later said it was "good news" that America would now back talks with moderate elements of the Taliban.
Despite his decision to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, Mr Obama appeared to leave open the option of snatching terrorism suspects - with or without the co-operation of the country in which they were found.
He said: "There could be situations - and I emphasise 'could be' because we haven't made a determination yet - where, let's say that we have a well-known al Qaeda operative that doesn't surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don't have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person."
But he emphasised the US would not torture any captives.
Reader views (1)
Please forgive our arrogant and ignorant President for the meaningless gifts he gave to the Prime Minister.
President Obama's is truly an embarrasment to the United States.
- Dave Mcglothlen, Chariton, Iowa USA, 09/03/2009 22:00
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