[Note near the end that this is not Karzai negotiating with Hekmatyar -- it's Holbrooke]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6256675.ece
May 10, 2009
The Sunday Times (UK)
Karzai in move to share power with warlord wanted by US
Extremist on America's list of most-wanted terrorists is to hold talks
with the Afghan government in coming weeks
Christina Lamb and Jerome Starkey, Kabul
ONE of Afghanistan's most wanted terrorists is to be offered a
power-sharing deal by the government of President Hamid Karzai as the
country's warlords extend their grip on power.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is on America's "most wanted" terrorist list,
is to hold talks with the Kabul government within the next few weeks.
Hekmatyar is the leader of Hezb-i-Islami, which has been fighting Nato
troops alongside the Taliban. The hardline group is responsible for
many attacks in the eastern and central regions, including the massacre
of 10 French soldiers in Sarobi last year. It controls Kapisa province,
just 50 miles north of Kabul.
The party is expected to be offered several ministries and provincial
governorships in return for laying down its arms and agreeing not to
disrupt the presidential elections due in August.
Hekmatyar will not be offered a post but will be asked to go into exile
in Saudi Arabia for three years, after which his name would be removed
from the US list.
The controversial move follows the announcement of Mohammed Qasim
Fahim, another former warlord, as Karzai's running mate, a choice that
had plunged diplomats into despair.
Fahim, a commander for the Northern Alliance, has been cited in reports
by Human Rights Watch and other agencies for his role in massacres and
criminal activities. "All the people most responsible for getting
Afghanistan into the mess it's in are coming back," said a western
diplomat.
In the 1980s Hekmatyar was a leading recipient of US aid for those
fighting the Soviet army, but he always preached anti-Americanism.
Following the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he returned from exile in
Iran to take up arms against his former paymasters. In April 2002 the
CIA tried to kill him with an unmanned Predator drone and his
organisation was branded a terrorist group.
A representative of Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's
regional envoy, has met Daoud Abedi, an Afghan-American businessman
close to Hekmatyar, and the US administration will fund an Afghan
government department to conduct negotiations with Hezb-i-Islami and
the Taliban.
It will be headed by Arif Noorzai, the former tribal affairs minister,
and will receive $69m (£45m) of largely US money to offer sweeteners to
win over the Taliban.
The focus on such political negotiations is the result of a growing
recognition that the Taliban will not be defeated militarily, despite
21,000 additional American troops.
<end excerpt>
Full at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6256675.ece
Michael