'Idea of the day' trading in and out for profit

[Ike Latif]

Former king Mohammed Zahir Shah has become a focus of international efforts to form a broad-based post-Taliban government. Some high-ranking Taliban officials in Kandahar have agreed with supporters of Afghanistan's former king to join a national reconciliation government, a top Pakhtoon leader said on Sunday.

Karzai is one of three Pakhtoon leaders in southern Afghanistan who have been negotiating with the Taliban leadership inside its spiritual bastion of Kandahar with a view to ending the siege without bloodshed.



"Some Taliban, including high-ranking officials, are in contact with us. They have agreed to national reconciliation and to the establishment of a national government," former Afghan deputy foreign minister Hamid Karzai said by telephone from the neighbouring province of Uruzgan. But he declined to give the names "for the time being" of the Taliban officials concerned because it "could endanger their safety".




Iqbal Latif