Hamid Karzai - Consultant for UNOCAL?

[Hakki Alacakaptan]

 || -----Original Message-----
 || From: Joe R. Golowka [mailto:joeG at ieee.org]
 ||
 || > However, the Talibs would not
 || > accept the US terms for the Centgas project
 ||
 || What specifically were the terms the Talibs wouldn't accept,
 || why wouldn't
 || they accept them, and when did negotiations break down?  Please include
 || sources.
 ||

Hope you don't mind me crossposting this to LbO. I've been asked for this
source previously off-list by others although it's been posted to the list,
so I think a reminder may be helpful. The specific terms of diagreement are
not known at this time. What is known is this:
------------------------
http://www.radioleft.com/article.php?op=Print&sid=4

Thursday November 15 01:21 PM EST

U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors

By Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service

PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) - Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the
government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service
investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the
delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and
economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.

In the book ''Bin Laden, la verité interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden
truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles
Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest
over the obstruction.

Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate
Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by
Saudi Arabia in it''.

The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to
consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil
and gas reserves in Central Asia.

They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime
''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the
construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich
oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan
and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have
been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.

But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this
rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors
claim.

''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the
Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you
under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

(...)