Spokesman: Karzai reviewing Taliban peace strategy

Hamid Karzai is reviewing his strategy for making peace with the Taliban and will address the nation on next steps "very soon," according to a spokesman for the Afghan president. The move came after the assassination of his top peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani by a turban bomber last month which Afghan officials say was planned by the Afghan Taliban's leadership body, the Quetta Shura, in Pakistan. But the militant group has not claimed responsibility. "All peace talks with the Taliban are suspended. The president will review the peace and reconciliation strategy," Siamak Herawi, a spokesman for Karzai, told AFP. The spokesman said Karzai was expected to announce a new strategy for peace efforts in a televised address "very soon." Rabbani was chairman of Karzai's High Peace Council which had made scant progress in opening peace talks with the Taliban in a bid to end a 10-year war. No substantive peace talks have taken place. Rabbani thought he was meeting an envoy carrying a special message from insurgents when he was killed. At a meeting with Islamic clerics on Friday, Karzai stressed the importance of negotiating with Pakistan in a bid to end the war. "(Afghan Taliban leader) Mullah (Mohammad) Omar doesn't have an address... their peace emissary turns out to be a killer, whom should we talk to?" Karzai asked the clerics. "The Afghan nation asks me who's the other party that you hold talks with? My answer is, Pakistan." "The only solution, which is also the demand of all people, is that talks be held with the Pakistani side, since all the sanctuaries and safe havens of the opposition are located in that country," he added. Karzai has long stressed that the roots of the insurgency are in Pakistan. Afghanistan's Interior Minister Bismillah Mohammadi has linked Pakistan's intelligence agency, elements of which are suspected to have links with the Afghan insurgency, to the killing. The Afghan intelligence service said Saturday it had handed evidence in Rabbani's killing to Pakistani officials to take action. The president has been in power since the Taliban were ousted ten years ago by a US-led invasion in October 2001 following the 9/11 attacks in the United States. He has repeatedly called on insurgents to lay down their arms for a peaceful end to the decade-long insurgency but the rebels have turned down his offers. Rabbani's killing on September 20 dealt perhaps the heaviest blow yet to his hopes of securing reconciliation with the Taliban.