Mixed reaction to Karzai's offer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/6129910.stm

Version 0 of 1.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's offer to hold talks with the leaders of two prominent insurgent groups has had a mixed response.

A few days ago President Karzai said he was willing to negotiate with the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.

But it was his offer of talks with an Afghan warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which has provoked most controversy.

The insurgency has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 militants, civilians and Afghan and Nato troops this year.

Controversial figure

The insurgents, fighting both the Afghan army and troops from the Nato-dominated International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), fall into three crude categories.

The Taleban, al-Qaeda and a 30-year-old mujahideen faction called Hezb-e-Islami, headed by Mr Hekmatyar, one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords.

Taleban and al-Qaeda militants have shown little interest in co-operating with Afghanistan's Western-backed government.

But Mr Hekmatyar, in hiding and increasingly isolated, is the controversial figure.

He was first lionised for his resistance to Soviet occupation in the 1980s and, later vilified for his part in the fighting among mujahideen factions which killed more than 25,000 civilians in the early 1990s.

Mr Hekmatyar is a veteran of the ever-shifting alliances of convenience which have characterised Afghanistan's recent history.

A supporter of Osama Bin Laden in 2003, he was labelled a terrorist by the United States.

President Karzai's offer of talks with Mr Hekmatyar, an alleged war criminal, has horrified many Afghans who would like to put the era of the warlords behind them.

Yet some politicians have accepted it as part of a forgive-and-forget policy of reconciliation and, still more, point out sceptically that this government already has its share of warlords in its ranks.

Afghanistan is finding it hard to break free from the actors who trod the stage in its bloody past.