U.S. backs talks with Taliban: Former envoy to Kabul

Interview By Hamdollah Emadi Heidari

TEHRAN, Dec. 15 (MNA) -- James Dobbins, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, says Washington supports negotiations with Taliban.
"The U.S. and the NATO will support efforts by Hamid Karzai to engage insurgent leaders and factions and will encourage him to do so when there appear prospects for accommodation,” Dobbins told Mehr News Agency in an interview recently.


He added, “The insurgents of whom the Taliban is only one faction, albeit probably the largest, are not likely to be interested in any such accommodation as long as they believe that they are winning the military struggle.”


The former chief diplomat to Kabul believes that troop expansion in Afghanistan should be considered only a part of the new U.S. strategy for improving the situation in the country.


“The new strategy should have many components, including regional diplomacy, strengthening the Afghan government, working with local and tribal leaders, promoting economic development and even negotiating with the insurgents,” Dobbins explained.


“These are all more likely to succeed in a more secure environment,” said the former diplomat who currently chairs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation.


On a dispute between Iran and the West over exchanging nuclear fuel for a nuclear reactor in Tehran, Dobbins said, "Iran should confirm the arrangement that its negotiators initially accepted to have its existing stock of low enriched uranium further enlarged abroad."


On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki disputed the Western claims that Tehran has rejected the proposal to exchange its low-enriched uranium for 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor.

Mottaki said Iran is ready to exchange 400 kilograms of its low-enriched uranium on Kish Island in the Persian Gulf.


James Dobbins directs the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation and served as Assistant Secretary of State under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He was the Clinton administration’s special envoy to Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, and Somalia and the Bush administration’s first envoy to Afghanistan.


HE/PA

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MNA