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Kabul: The Taliban leadership on Sunday denied a report they were negotiating with the Afghan government to end the war and the insurgents repeated their pledge to keep fighting till foreign troops were expelled from the country.
Britain's Observer newspaper said on Sunday the "unprecedented talks" involved a senior ex-Taliban member travelling between Kabul, the bases of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and European capitals.
Declined
Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta on Sunday declined to confirm the report which said the talks were being mediated by Saudi Arabia and backed by Britain.
The Taliban leadership said the report was part of a plan aimed at creating concern and mistrust between the Taliban and its supporters abroad.
It said the Al Qaida-backed Taliban would not resort to covert talks and would only negotiate in the interests of Islam and Afghanistan.
"Our struggle will continue until the withdrawal of foreign forces and the establishment of an independent Islamic government," said the statement sent yesterday.
Despite the denial of talks and the hardline rhetoric, the statement appeared to maintain a softening of the Taliban line on the Afghan government begun this year in that it did not call for the toppling of President Hamid Karzai's administration.
Karzai has led Afghanistan since US-led and Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban government.
Driven from power, the Taliban retreated to hideouts along the Afghan-Pakistan border, but regrouped and launched a virulent insurgency in 2005, benefitting from frustration with the presence of foreign troops and the slow pace of economic change. This year has been the bloodiest so far with 2,500 people killed in the first six months alone, 1,000 of them civilians.
Despite the presence of some 71,000 foreign troops and more than 130,000 Afghan security forces, the Taliban have extended the scale and scope of their insurgency. Western diplomats admit there is no purely military solution to the conflict.
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