Afghan President Hamid Karzai has called for a process of reconciliation with the Taliban.
With elections approaching in August, Karzai also denied that Afghanistan was a narco-state or a failed state and insisted that vast progress had been made over the last seven years.
‘This is the right time for me to call for a process of reconciliation,’ he said at a major security conference in Germany, addressing an audience that included top US and European officials.
‘We will invite all those Taliban who are not part of al-Qaeda, who are not part of terrorist networks, who want to return to their country, who want to live by the constitution of Afghanistan and who want to have peace in their country and live a normal life, to participate, to come back to their country’.
Mr Karzai is set to stand again in presidential elections on 20 August, but his popularity has waned amid allegations of government corruption, growing opium production and an ever-more tenacious Taliban-led insurgency.
NATO nations and their partners fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan have had mixed reactions to Mr Karzai's proposals to talk to the insurgents, with many saying they reject talks with militants who have blood on their hands.
Mr Karzai raised eyebrows in November when he said he would protect the fugitive leader of the insurgent Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in return for peace whether his international partners liked it or not.
He insisted though that the extremist Islamic leader, who is wanted by the United States, would have to accept the Afghan constitution, a pro-democracy document drawn up after the US-led forces ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.
The second-in-command of the Al-Qaeda terror network, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, has said that Afghanistan's attempt to negotiate with the Taliban shows weakness.
