Karzai admits security failure 10 years on

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KABUL: President Hamid Karzai admitted his government and the US-led NATO mission have failed to provide security to Afghans, giving an interview to mark 10 years since the start of the war against the Taliban.

Karzai, who was forced to review his efforts to broker a settlement after his peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani was assassinated last month, also told the BBC that he had not ruled out peace talks with the insurgents.

"We've done terribly badly in providing security to the Afghan people and this is the greatest shortcoming of our government and of our international partners," he said.

"What we should do is to provide better, more predictable environment of security to the Afghan citizens, and that the international community and the Afghan government definitely have failed (to do)," he added.

Last month, the United Nations said the number of security incidents was up 39 percent on the first eight months of last year figures that NATO disputed, saying insurgent attacks were down two percent in the same period.

The Afghan president, who took office shortly after the 2001 US led invasion brought down the Taliban regime, denied that Rabbani's killing by a suicide bomber on September 20 had suspended his quest for talks with the Taliban.

"We have not said that we will not talk to them. We've said we don't know who to talk to, we don't have an address," Karzai said.

The assassin who killed Rabbani with explosives under his turban had secured a private audience with the former Afghan president by posing as a peace emissary from the Taliban leadership.

"We were asking for negotiations," said Karzai.

"We wanted to talk to them, but with the assassination of president Rabbani, and by someone who came in the name of a messenger from Taliban, now we know that we don't have an address to talk to," the president added.

Until a representative emerges "we'll not be able to talk to Taliban because we don't know where to find them," he told the BBC.

Karzai has promised to call a traditional assembly of national leaders, called a loya jirga, in order to decide on a peace strategy after coming under mounting calls to drop talks with the Taliban from the agenda entirely.

The Afghan government and US commanders say the Taliban insurgency cannot be defeated unless its rear bases in neighbouring Pakistan are eliminated, and have put mounting pressure on Islamabad to take action against the sanctuaries.

Karzai stoked fears in Pakistan by visiting arch-rival India this week and signing a strategic partnership with New Delhi. But he told the BBC he was not pointing fingers over the Taliban sanctuaries.

"That problem, the sanctuaries in Pakistan, will not go away unless the government of Pakistan cooperates with Afghanistan, unless the international community cooperates in a meaningful, effective way to have it removed."

Pakistan argues that it is already overstretched fighting homegrown Taliban offshoots who pose a security threat at home to widen the battle.

Its military has been long accused of harbouring links to Afghan warlords and members of the Taliban as a means of exerting influence in Afghanistan after US-led foreign combat troops withdraw by end 2014.(AFP)