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Taliban Plans U.N. Talks on Lowering Afghan Casualties | Taliban Plans U.N. Talks on Lowering Afghan Casualties |
(35 minutes later) | |
KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents have agreed to meet with United Nations officials to discuss civilian casualties and how to reduce them, the top United Nations official in Afghanistan said Tuesday. | |
Jan Kubis, special representative of the United Nations Secretary General, said he welcomed the insurgents’ “signals of willingness” and that efforts are now under way to determine how such meetings could take place. He also deplored what he said was a 24 percent increase in civilian casualties through June 6 this year compared with the same period in 2012, with three-fourths of those caused by anti-government forces, according to United Nations data. | |
Word of the talks comes as NATO countries draw down their forces in Afghanistan, with the United States planning to end its combat role by 2014. A recent spring offensive by the Taliban has led to an increase in violence as the insurgents test the Afghan army as it prepares to take over completely from withdrawing NATO forces. | |
Mr. Kubis, speaking at a news conference, said that the United Nations had publicly and through private channels asked the Taliban to engage in talks about how to address the problem of civilian casualties. Very recently, he said, “we received signals of their willingness to discuss this issue with us. I welcome this. Now we are discussing modalities of how hopefully to start this dialogue.” | |
It was the first public acknowledgment by the international group in recent months of any progress in efforts to talk with the insurgents, although these talks would be limited to the subject of reducing civilian casualties, and not cover wider talks to end the conflict. | |
There have been secret peace talks between the United Nations and the Taliban in previous years, but no known ones recently. | |
Mr. Kubis did not give a detailed breakdown of civilian casualty figures, which would be covered in a forthcoming report, which is due out in July. But he expressed concern that the latest data show a marked increase in civilian casualties, in contrast to last year, when there was a decrease. | |
In addition to 2,499 civilian casualties through June 6 of this year – representing a 24 percent increase over the same period in 2012 – Mr. Kubis said 21 percent of those civilian victims were children, an increase of 30 percent over the previous year. | |
“This is unacceptable,” he said. Of those, 74 percent were attributable to anti-government forces, he said, and only 9 percent were caused by pro-government forces. | |
He did not provide a breakdown of how many of those victims were killed and how many wounded. Mr. Kubis also said that civilian casualties resulting from improvised explosive devices increased 41 percent from a year earlier, and targeted killings or assassinations by insurgents rose 42 percent, while deaths from airstrikes launched by the coalition continued to decline, by another 30 percent for the first half of this year. | |
The rise in casualties during the first half of this year, compared with the drop during the same period in 2012, may well reflect the weather more than the tempo of the war. This winter was mild and short, while last year it was severe and long, helping curtail some of the violence. |