Karzai confirms holding talks with Taliban

Of course this is not really news, other than Karzai's confirmation of the talks. Somehow, I just can't think of any other words to introduce this news story, except to say I'm outta here. I'll post again on Friday evening. By then maybe I'll have cooled off so the post isn't just strings of cuss words. But cursing Obama and his team, the Congress, the U.S. military and all the analysts they rely on, would be shouting at a lame horse to run.

Bye for now. This means I won't be posting comments until Friday. Going dark -- unplugging from the Net.

CNN Wire Staff
October 10, 2010 4:06 p.m. EDT

Watch Larry King's exclusive interview with Hamid Karzai's on "Larry King Live" at 9 p.m. ET Monday.

(CNN) -- Attempting to advance his nation's peace progress with insurgents, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said unofficial negotiations with the Taliban have been taking place and hopes the formation of a peace council will further those efforts.

"We have been talking to the Taliban as countryman to countryman, talk in that manner," Karzai told CNN's "Larry King Live" in an interview scheduled to air Monday night. "Not as a regular official contact with the Taliban with a fixed address, but rather unofficial personal contacts have been going on for quite some time."

In excerpts of the interview released Sunday, Karzai also spoke on the High Peace Council, an initiative headed by former Afghan President Buhanuddin Rabbani and tasked with boosting negotiations with Taliban insurgents.

"The Taliban, those of whom who are Afghans and the sons of Afghan soil, who have been driven to violence by various factors beyond their control and beyond ours caused by circumstances in Afghanistan, we want them to come back to their country," Karzai said. "They are like kids who have run away ... from the family. The family should try to bring them back and give them better discipline and incorporate them back into their family and society. President Rabbani assuming chairmanship today of the peace council is exactly in that spirit."

However, the Afghan government will work against groups like al Qaeda, he said. "But those who are a part of al Qaeda and the other terrorist networks who are ideologically against us or who are working against Afghanistan knowingly and out of the purpose of hatred and enmity -- those of course we have to work against. Whether they are against Afghanistan or whether they are al Qaeda and the terrorist war against the United States or our neighbors in Pakistan, those of course cannot be accepted."

Karzai's remarks about the unofficial contacts with the Taliban came when the president was asked about a Washington Post report that secret high-level talks between the government and the Taliban were underway.

"Now that the peace council has come into existence, these talks will go on, and will go on officially and more rigorously, I hope," Karzai said.
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