Britain, US to seek lifting of UN sanctions against 18 Taliban leaders

Britain and the United States are pressing for lifting of United Nations' sanctions against 18 former senior Taliban figures later this month in the strongest indication yet that the western powers are looking for a negotiated peace with the Taliban, reports 'The Guardian'.
Candidates include former head of the regime's religious police, Mohammed Qalamuddin, whose officers were responsible for some of the worst atrocities under the Taliban regime, said the daily. According to Guardian, officials believe that the move would send a clear signal to the insurgents that reintegrating into Afghan society is possible, if they put down their arms.
The sanctions were imposed in 1999, when the Taliban were in power, and were expanded after the 9/11 attacks in America. The sanctions ban about 140 individuals from travelling or holding bank accounts. Removing the restrictions has been a key demand of the insurgents in Afghanistan and has long been supported by the Afghan government.
Other candidates include figures who have acted as intermediaries in contacts between the Afghan government and the insurgents in recent years, such as a former Taliban education minister Arsala Rahmani and Qalamuddin, who has kept a low profile since being released from prison in 2005. An Afghan minister told the daily that lifting the sanctions on such men would facilitate establishment of a political office for the Taliban, in a third country, as it would allow key intermediaries, mainly former senior figures in the movement now living in Kabul, to travel.
Turkey, Turkmenistan and Qatar have all offered to host such an office, Afghan and western officials in Kabul told the 'Guardian'. Afghan officials in Kabul also said that contacts with the Taliban leadership could now be described as "systematic" and a "significant advance" on earlier "disorganised" discussions.
The talks involve an envoy travelling between Kabul and Pakistan on regular basis, relaying proposals and counterproposals, said the minister, who has direct knowledge of the "peace process" as it is known in the Afghan capital. The meetings come at a time of intensifying effort to find a negotiated solution to the 10-year-old conflict in Afghanistan as western governments prepare to withdraw troops.
It was recently disclosed that US officials and a Taliban representative have held three meetings in last two months, two in Qatar and one in Germany. In another important development, representatives of the Haqqani network, one of the most effective and intractable of the insurgent factions, visited Kabul "very recently", the officials told The Guardian.
In the last six years, only 15 names have been removed from the sanctions list. A key shift has been in Washington where there is now almost unanimous support for the delisting of dozens of individuals. Delisting requires the assent of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. A request for delisting of 47 individuals was supposed to be submitted by Kabul to the UN 'sanctions committee' before a key meeting on June16. However, the necessary documentation for only 18 individuals was assembled in time by Afghan officials. Further opportunities to remove individuals will come later in the year. Britain and America are also keen to scrap entirely, or split, the sanctions list to distinguish between al Qaeda and the Taliban, the paper reported.