The talks between the Taleban and Marc Grossman came in late January, after he met Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, the official said.
Grossman, President Barack Obama’s chief envoy for war-torn Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, later briefed Karzai about his talks with Taleban representatives during a visit by the Afghan leader to Italy. “I can confirm that Grossman met with the Taleban representatives in Qatar. When the president (Karzai) was in Rome, he came over to his residence and briefed him about his meetings with the Taleban,” the official said.
The US, which heads a 130,000-strong force fighting a Taleban insurgency against Karzai’s government, has made tentative moves toward talks with the hard-line militia in Qatar, where they plan to open an office.
Karzai, rejected by the Taleban as a “puppet,” has said publicly that he supports the plan, but was widely reported to be concerned that he would be sidelined in the Taleban’s talks with the US.
Washington dispatched Grossman to Kabul last month to assure the Afghan president of a leading role once the talks get under way.
The official told AFP that during his visit to Kabul Grossman met Karzai twice and “a number of agreements were made over a number of issues concerning Taleban talks.”
He refused to give details but “our stance is unchanged: The president wants the talks to be Afghan-led and Afghan owned,” he said.
US officials say a senior US military commander will visit Pakistan this month in what could be an important step in healing the rift between the two nations.
Two officials said Tuesday that Gen. James Mattis, commander of US Central Command, will meet with Pakistani Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani to talk about the US investigation into airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in an Nov. 26 exchange of fire at the border with Afghanistan. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk on the record.
Mattis would be the first high-ranking official to visit since the airstrikes, which sent relations to a new low and prompted Pakistan to close its border to US war supplies headed for Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Army officials met with NATO and Afghan forces on Wednesday in an effort to improve coordination along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a sign of thawing relations after American airstrikes accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last year.
Pakistan was outraged by the Nov. 26 attack on two of its Afghan border posts and claimed it was deliberate. Islamabad retaliated by closing its border to supplies meant for NATO troops in Afghanistan and by kicking the US out of a base used by American drones. But tensions seemed to have eased slightly, with Pakistani officials saying in recent days the government should reopen its border to NATO supplies as long as it can negotiate higher fees.
The United States and Pakistan have long had a troubled relationship, but both sides have an interest in preventing it from rupturing completely. The US needs Pakistan’s help to fight Al-Qaeda and negotiate peace with the Taleban in Afghanistan, while Islamabad is keen on keeping billions of dollars in American aid flowing.
Wednesday’s meeting took place at a border coordination center in Torkham, a city on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, the Pakistani Army said. The operations chief for the Pakistani army, Maj. Gen. Ashfaq Nadeem, attended, it said.
The US and Pakistan disagree who should be blamed for the deadly incident in November, which occurred in the middle of the night as US and Afghan forces were conducting operations near the border inside Afghanistan.
The Pakistani Army rejected a US investigation that said mistakes were made on both sides and blamed Pakistani troops for triggering the incident by shooting at coalition forces.
Pakistan said its soldiers were shooting at Islamist militants who were nowhere near the coalition troops. It blamed US forces for the incident because they failed to notify their Pakistani counterparts that they were conducting operations near the border.
The US has said its commanders believe some of their military operations have been compromised when they’ve given details and locations to the Pakistanis — an example of the lack of trust between the two countries.
The US has acknowledged that efforts to determine who was firing on the American troops and whether there were friendly Pakistani forces in the area failed because US forces used inaccurate maps, were unaware of Pakistani border post locations and mistakenly provided the wrong location for the troops.
Pakistan has dismissed these explanations and claimed the incident was “deliberate at some level.” It refused to participate in the US investigation, claiming past probes into border incidents were biased.
US drone strikes against Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region along the Afghan border have also caused tension between the two countries.
The latest attack occurred Wednesday when US drone-fired missiles hit a house in North Waziristan’s Spalga village, killing nine people, including some domestic Taleban militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
