Petraeus holds out prospect of reconciliation with Taliban FEATURE 08/17/2010

Petraeus holds out prospect of reconciliation with Taliban

FEATURE 08/17/2010 WASHINGTON — Gen. David Petraeus, the US commander in Afghanistan, held out the prospect Sunday of eventual reconciliation with the Taliban, including negotiations with leaders with “blood on their hands.” “It doesn’t mean that (Taliban leader) Mullah Omar is about to stroll down main street in Kabul anytime soon and raise his hand and swear an oath on the constitution of Afghanistan,” Petraeus said in an interview. But he told NBC’s Meet the Press there is “every possibility, I think, that there can be low- and mid-level reintegration and indeed some fracturing of the senior leadership that could be really defined as reconciliation.” Petraeus, who took command in Kabul following the sacking of his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal, famously exploited rifts within Iraq’s Sunni insurgency to turn around a losing US-led war there. He now has less than a year to show results in Afghanistan where what he described as a “Pashtun insurgency” operating from sanctuaries in Pakistan has exposed the weakness of the government in Kabul and the Nato-led force backing it. His interviews with NBC television, The New York Times and The Washington Post were released hours before the Web site icasualties.org announced that the total number of foreign troops killed in the nearly nine years of the Afghan war has topped 2,000.... MORE Source:  The Daily Tribune URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100817com7.html

COMMENTARY EDITORIAL JBC: Still a Palace adjunct FRONTLINE No hope for credibility FEATURE Kabul’s frustrated expats run the streets NO HOLDS BARRED An open letter to P-Noy AN OUTSIDERS VIEW A mad desire to read focus Obama policy feeds violence on Kabul’s doorstep FEATURE Petraeus holds out prospect of reconciliation with Taliban