Afghan Taliban meet U.N. special envoy, report says

November 24, 2000
Web posted at: 7:56 AM HKT (2356 GMT)

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) -- The U.N. representative trying to bring peace to Afghanistan met the ruling Taliban's foreign minister on Thursday to discuss an agenda for talks between the warring factions, an Afghan news service reported.

Afghan Islamic Press said Francesc Vendrell met Taliban's Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakeel Ahmed Muttawakil in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and discussed an agenda for peace talks between the movement and the northern opposition alliance.

Vendrell is shuttling between the Taliban and the opposition alliance, led by commander Ahmed Shah Masood, to prepare the grounds for direct peace talks sometimes in the future.

He told Reuters last week that he hopes to at least have an agreed agenda by February.

AIP said Muttawakil told Vendrell that the United Nations had been partial against the Taliban by giving the U.N. seat to the ousted government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who controlled less than 5 percent of the country.

"In order to prove their impartiality, the United Nations should have at least kept the seat vacant," the AIP reported the Afghan foreign minister as saying.

In a meeting this month in New York the United Nations kept the Afghanistan seat with Burhanuddin, who was ousted from Kabul by the Taliban in 1996.

AIP said Vendrell later left Kandahar -- the spiritual headquarters of the Taliban -- for Kabul for further negotiations with the Taliban in the Afghan capital.

Vendrell constantly travels to meet the warring factions and the "Six-Plus-Two" countries that comprise Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China plus the United States and Russia.

Vendrell has already met the Taliban negotiator, Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi in Kabul last week. He has also held talks with Dr. Abdullah, acting foreign minister of the opposition alliance in neighbouring Tajikistan.

Several past attempts by the United Nations for peace talks have failed to bring to an end the factional fighting that has ravaged the country.

The Taliban, which controls some 95 percent of Afghanistan, are battling with forces loyal to Masood, in the northeast of the country.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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