Afghanistan will hold peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar, President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday, a decision the White House described as "an important first step" towards reviving the stuttering reconciliation process.
Mr Karzai announced the negotiation process, which will start with separate talks between the US and Taliban later this week, after a ceremony to mark the beginning of the final stage of the withdrawal of the international coalition from its near-12 year war in Afghanistan, with most foreign combat troops due to be out by the end of next year.
Mr Karzai said members of the High Peace Council he created in 2010 would fly for the talks to Doha, Qatar's capital, where a long-promised office there for the Taliban – who ruled Afghanistan until the US-led 2001 invasion – is finally being opened.
If the talks do take place, it would be the first negotiations between the different sides in the Afghanistan war since the US invasion.
A senior Obama administration official said that the Taliban had made two commitments that "we have long called for" and which were important preconditions for opening the office in Doha. As well as expressing support for an Afghan peace process, the official said, the Taliban also said it opposed the use of Afghan soil to threaten other countries, a reference to al-Qaeda's presence in the country before 9/11.
"These statements represent an important first step towards reconciliation, a process that after 30 years of armed conflict will be complex, long and messy," a senior US official said. "This is a new development, potentially significant, but peace is not at hand."
President Barack Obama commended Mr Karzai for trying to launch the talks, but cautioned that it would be not be an easy process.
While peace talks between the Taliban and their enemies in Kabul and Washington have stalled before, analysts say changed political conditions – including the US Afghanistan troop drawdown and a switch of leadership in Pakistan – could make progress more likely this time.
"Qatar can act as a good facilitator – although I don't think the Qataris can make the earth move," said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center think-tank. "This would require the other usual players to make it work."
"Afghanistan's High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to discuss peace talks with the Taliban," said Mr Karzai, who gave no date for the discussions. "We hope that our brothers the Taliban also understand that the process will move to our country soon."
Obama administration officials said that talks between the US and the Taliban, would restart on Thursday, while the Taliban and the Afghan High Peace Council would then meet "within days".
Talks between Taliban and US government representatives began early last year, but the Taliban quickly pulled out over what it said was Washington's contradictory approach to reconciliation in Afghanistan. A senior US official said that the core of the process needed to be the talks among Afghans, although the separate talks between the US and the Taliban could help.
The Taliban, which has fought a long insurgency against both international troops and Afghan security forces, did not make any immediate comment. Mr Karzai's comments came as Mohammad Mohaqiq, a peace council member, escaped an explosion early on Tuesday in Kabul that killed three people and wounded 21.
Mr Karzai said the Qatar peace talks needed to end the killing, shift quickly to Afghanistan and not become a means for any third power to exploit Afghanistan. Tensions have been growing between Kabul and Islamabad, with troop clashes on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border this year. Analysts are now watching closely to see if the return of Nawaz Sharif as Pakistan prime minister this month makes a difference.
David Cameron, British prime minister, said the idea of direct talks with the Taliban had come up over dinner at the G8 summit on Monday night and that he fully supported the initiative.
Mr Cameron, the host of the summit in Northern Ireland, said a "political process" was needed to accompany the work being done by US and British troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
Additional reporting by George Parker in Lough Erne
