Taliban leaders will decide soon whether to join talks with the Afghan government, a militant spokesman said on Friday, after President Hamid Karzai invited them to a peace council aimed at ending the Afghan war. In the country's south, suicide attackers launched an assault in the capital of Helmand, with gunmen holed up in three buildings battling government and Nato troops who returned fire with helicopter strikes.
On Thursday, at a major conference on Afghanistan, Karzai set the framework for dialogue with Taliban leaders when he called on the Islamist group's leadership to take part in a "loya jirga" - or large assembly of elders - to initiate peace talks. A Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan declined to talk in detail about Karzai's plans and only said the militants would make a decision "soon" about his offer.
"I cannot say a word regarding these peace talks. The Taliban leadership will soon decide whether to take part," the spokesman, who uses the name Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said by telephone from an undisclosed location. The Taliban have said repeatedly that negotiations with the Afghan government can only take place when foreign troops completely withdraw from Afghanistan and have dismissed the reintegration plans as a "trick".
A United Nations official told Reuters on Thursday that the UN envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, had met with members of the Taliban Quetta Shura in Dubai on January 8. Eide told Britain's BBC no meeting took place that day, but would not discuss meetings that might have happened on other dates. A UN spokesman in Kabul said: "as always the United Nations stands ready to assist in this process in any way that we can".