‘Real opportunities’ for talks with Taliban: Gates

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Military pressure on the Taliban could lead to “real opportunities” for peace talks with leaders of the Afghan insurgency within a year, outgoing US defence secretary Robert Gates said on Saturday.

“My own view is that the political opportunities will flow from military pressure,” Gates said at a security conference in Singapore prior to leaving for Kabul as part of a final world tour before stepping down later this month.

“The possibility of some kind of political talks and reconciliation might be substantive enough to offer some hope of progress,” said the Pentagon chief.

But he stressed that for the Taliban to have any political role in the war-torn country, the insurgents must accept that they will not win the military campaign against the United States and its allies.

The Taliban must also cut ties with Al Qaeda and surrender all their arms if they are to have any political say in the future of the country, he added.

“I think there is a generally accepted view that primarily all conflicts of this kind eventually come to a close with some kind of a political settlement,” Gates said.

“But the reality is, in my view, that the prospects for a political settlement do not become real until the Taliban and the other adversaries, the Afghan adversaries, begin to conclude they cannot win militarily.”

He said US-led forces had rolled back the Taliban out of its bastions in the south and there was mounting evidence that the insurgents were suffering setbacks on the battlefield.

“If we can sustain those successes, if we can further expand the security bubble. Perhaps this winter, the possibility of some kind of political talks, or reconciliation, might be substantive enough to offer some hope of progress,” Gates said.

A weakening of the insurgency would also mean that neighboring countries would have an increased incentive to play a role in promoting a negotiated end to the conflict, he said.

“I think under those circumstances, we can see real opportunities over the course of the next year,” said Gates.

The development of more capable Afghan security forces, who are due to gradually take the lead over the next several years, will also help lay the ground for an end to the war, he said.

After visiting Kabul, Gates will head to Brussels to attend a Nato defence ministers meeting where the air campaign in Libya and war in Afghanistan are expected to top the agenda.

President Barack Obama has set next month as the start date for withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan, and the end of 2014 as the time when US and Nato forces must transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces.

It has been nearly 10 years since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime, which had been harbouring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden, who orchestrated the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in the United States, was killed in May by US commandos who raided his hideout in Pakistan.