Pakistan's army has contacts with Taliban leaders: Abbas

The Pakistani Army has admitted that it is in contact with Afghanistan's Taliban leaders, including Mullah Mohammad Omar, and can bring them to the negotiating table with the United States if its concerns with India are addressed.

Pakistan's chief military spokesman, major general Athar Abbas, has been quoted by CNN in an interview as saying that the military is still in contact with Taliban commanders like Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani, Mullah Nazir, and others like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar of the Hizb-e-Islami.

Within hours of CNN airing the report yesterday, the inter-services public relations issued a denial, saying the remarks attributed to Abbas were "totally baseless, fabricated, and unfounded as well as out of context".

"No intelligence organisation in the world shuts its last door on any other organisation. So therefore, the contacts are there. The communication remains," CNN quoted Gen Abbas as saying in the interview.

Gen Abbas said that in return for any role as a broker between the US and the Taliban, Pakistan wants concessions from Washington over Islamabad's concerns with long-time rival India, the channel reported.

It claimed that senior US officials had told the channel that president Barack Obama's administration is "willing both to talk to top Taliban leaders and to raise some of Pakistan's concerns with India".

Asked if the US can talk to the militant groups in Afghanistan, Abbas said, "There are reconciliable elements... in these Taliban groups... and one has to identify those." He said there was no harm in opening negotiations with them.

In reply to another question on whether Pakistan could provide assistance to a US mission for dialogue, he replied: "I think, yes, that can be worked out, that's possible."

"The ISI was in the forefront of the whole struggle against the Soviets. Now, by maintaining contacts with the organisations like [Mullah Omar's Taliban and Hekmatyar's Hizb] doesn't mean that that state policy is [to be] providing them physical support or the funding or training," Abbas said.

"What we see as a concern is an over-involvement of Indians in Afghanistan that becomes a concern — particularly if one is watching the security calculus in that," he said.

"The fear is, tomorrow what happens if these Americans move out and they are replaced by Indians as military trainers? That becomes a serious concern. So these kind of apprehensions are there, and they are talked about and they are consulted," Abbas said.

He said Pakistan has been informing the US-led coalition countries about its concerns. "They have to have a line because if [it] goes beyond them, beyond the line, then of course the situation would take an ugly turn," he warned.

After the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan did a U-turn on its policy of supporting terrorist groups, he said. "And the state followed, the army followed, the ISI followed."