Hold on, we’re taking orders from Karzai?
(WaPo) — The Obama administration will resume peace talks with the Taliban as soon as Afghan President Hamid Karzai formally blesses the negotiations, according to senior administration officials who indicated the process could be under way within weeks.
Marc Grossman, the senior U.S. diplomat who shepherded a series of secret U.S. meetings with the insurgents last year, will meet with Karzai late next week to ensure that the Afghan president is on board, officials said.
“If Karzai were to tell [the administration] to go ahead, then we’d start talking again,” said one of two officials who discussed the secret negotiations on condition of anonymity.
The administration, which has said negotiations must be “Afghan-led,” insists that its own talks with the Taliban are only a preliminary effort to build confidence before actual negotiations over Afghanistan’s future can begin between the insurgents and the Karzai government.
One hurdle is that the Taliban prefer to talk to the United States and are so far “not willing to sit down with the Afghan government’,” one official said. “Our job is to see if we can break through that door.” Karzai has been under pressure from domestic opponents of negotiations to stand firm against the talks.