Kabul News:Taliban plan Qatar office: step toward peace talks

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An Afghan policeman and U.S. soldiers block a road after a suicide bombing at a Kandahar bazaar.

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Kabul --
In its most public indication to date of a willingness to enter peace negotiations, the Taliban movement announced Tuesday that it plans to open a political office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.
The apparent deal to inaugurate a Taliban mission is largely the product of months of efforts by the U.S. government. Senior American officials have repeatedly asserted over the last year that a political settlement with the insurgents is the only way to achieve a durable peace after a decade of war.
Although U.S. officials sought to characterize any future peace process as Afghan-led, President Hamid Karzai may prove a balky partner. He had expressed strong qualms about a Taliban mission in Qatar, urging instead that it be located in Saudi Arabia or Turkey.
Last month, Karzai's government recalled its ambassador to Qatar in a sign of displeasure over not being sufficiently informed about contacts between the Americans, the Qataris and the Taliban.
Even with peace hopes raised by the Taliban gesture, violence continued apace. In the southern city of Kandahar, a suicide bomber on a motorbike set off a powerful blast in a crowded market district early Tuesday afternoon. The provincial government said in a statement that four children and a police officer were killed and 16 other people were injured, six of them children.
Hours later, a second suicide blast in the city killed eight people, including three policemen, said Zalmay Ayubi, a spokesman for the Kandahar governor.
Efforts to open channels with the insurgents on Afghan soil, however, have largely met with failure - most spectacularly in September, when the Afghan government's chief negotiator, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, was assassinated by a suicide bomber posing as a Taliban peace envoy. In the wake of that setback, Karzai said no contacts could occur without an "address" for making contacts with the Taliban or their intermediaries.

U.S. soldiers walk with their Afghan translator near the scene of a suicide attack in Kandahar, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2012. A suicide bomber driving a motorcycle killed four civilians and a police officer in southern Afghanistan's Kandahar city on Tuesday, police said. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)