‘MI6 Held Talks With Taleban This Year’

LONDON, 27 December 2007 — British intelligence agents held secret talks with Taleban leaders on several occasions this year, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported yesterday. Officers from MI6 met senior insurgents in the middle of the year, the paper said, quoting an unidentified intelligence source.

The United Nations is currently in negotiations with the Afghan government to try to stop the expulsion of two senior European diplomats amid allegations that they had contact with the Taleban.

“The SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) officers were understood to have sought peace directly with the Taleban with them coming across as some sort of armed militia,” the intelligence source told the Daily Telegraph.

“The British would also provide ‘mentoring’ for the Taleban.” The meetings — of which there were up to six — took place in houses on the outskirts of Lashkar Gah and in villages in the Upper Gereshk valley in southern Afghanistan, the paper said.

British infantry provided a security cordon and the meetings took place in the presence of Afghan officials, it added. “These meetings were with up to a dozen Taleban or with Taleban who had only recently laid down their arms,” its source said. “The impression was that these were important motivating figures inside the Taleban.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan protested the Afghan government’s decision to expel two senior European diplomats accused of holding unauthorized meetings with Taleban. The diplomats — one worked for the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and the other was the acting head of the European Union mission — will leave the country today, as demanded by the Afghan government, officials said.

“We see no basis for such a decision but we respect the sovereignty of the government of Afghanistan and have every intention to abide by that decision,” said Aleem Siddique, a spokesman for the UN mission. “We are hopeful to get their return as soon as possible,” he said.

The two diplomats — who have years of experience in Afghanistan, who speak the local languages and know the country’s complex tribal structures — traveled to the town of Musa Qala, in the volatile southern province of Helmand on Monday, Siddique said.

British, Afghan and US forces retook Musa Qala from Taleban militants earlier this month. It had been in Taleban hands since last February.