KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan will accept a Taliban liaison office in Qatar to start peace talks but no foreign power can get involved in the process without its consent, the government's peace council said, as efforts gather pace to find a solution to the decade-long war. The government would prefer such an office in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey, both of which it is close to, but was not averse to Doha as long as the authority of the Afghan state was not eroded and the office was only established for talks, officials said. President Hamid Karzai's administration recalled its ambassador from Doha last week, apparently angry that it had been kept in the dark about the latest round of contacts with the insurgent group. The tension between the Karzai administration and the United States over engaging the Taliban underscores the challenges of seeking a political settlement as the West prepares to withdraw most combat troops from the country by 2014. Efforts to engage the insurgent group have faced a string of setbacks, the most recent being the assassination of the head of the peace council and former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September at the hands of a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban emissary.
– Afghanistan today told foreign powers to take a back seat in talks with the Taliban and let Kabul lead the way, Reuters reports. Afghanistan's High Peace Council put its foot down after the US, Qatar, and Germany secretly set up an office for the Taliban in Qatar to continue negotiations. “Afghans must be in the lead in the talks,” an Afghan rep tells the AP. Afghanistan also wants the Taliban to sever ties with al-Qaeda and enact human rights reforms before talks continue. The council will consent to the Qatar office, however, and approves the US giving up Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Taliban concessions. "In fact we have been demanding this for a while," an Afghan official says. "These are Afghan prisoners." The council also wants Pakistan's support because members of the Taliban reside there. The tensions between Washington and President Hamid Karzai highlight the difficulty of reaching a settlement with the Taliban before the West is scheduled to pull out most of its troops in 2014.