DOHA, Qatar - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday urged the Taliban not to let differences on names and flags scuttle hopes for talks on ending 12 years of war in Afghanistan, saying the opening of an office in Qatar was an important step toward reconciliation that should not be squandered.
The announcement that U.S. officials and the Taliban would begin formal peace talks in the newly opened office raised hopes the longstalled process would finally get under way, but the plans quickly ran aground when Afghan President Hamid Karzai objected to a sign at the office featuring the Taliban regime’s former name and to them flying their former flag.
A Qatar Foreign Ministry statement said the Taliban had violated an agreement to call the office the “Political Bureau of the Taliban Afghan in Doha.”
President Barack Obama’s administration also said the U.S. and Qatar had never agreed to allow the Taliban to use their former name on the door.
The Taliban have removed the sign and lowered their flag but are divided over whether to keep them down.
Kerry, in the Qatari capital for separate talks on Syria’s civil war, said the Americans and the Afghan government’s High Peace Council were ready for talks, and he encouraged the Taliban to remain in the process.
“Nothing comes easily in this endeavor - we understand that. The road ahead will be difficult, no question about it, if there is a road ahead,” he said at a news conference.
He said the U.S. hoped the opening of the office would be “an important step in reconciliation, if possible.”
“It remains to be seen in this very first test whether or not the Taliban are prepared to do their part,” he said.
Meanwhile, James Dobbins, the U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, arrived in Doha on Saturday.
Shaheen Suhail, the Taliban’s spokesman in Doha, said that his office had received no word about when a meeting with Dobbins might be held.
Karzai temporarily suspended participation in talks Tuesday. He was angered by a sign identifying the Doha office as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the name used by the Taliban during their five-year rule, which ended in 2001 after the Islamic militant movement was ousted by the U.S. invasion over its support of al-Qaida.
Karzai also suspended separate negotiations with the United States over a security agreement aimed at providing a framework for some U.S. forces to remain in Afghanistan after the Americans and their NATO allies withdraw combat forces by the end of 2014.
Suhail, the Taliban spokesman said the spat has frustrated and angered some within the militant movement who said the Taliban have been meeting with representatives of dozens of countries and holding secret one-on-one meetings with members of Karzai’s High Peace Council on several occasions, always under the banner of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
In Kabul, a member of the government’s negotiation team said it was still prepared to begin talks in Qatar and called the removal of the sign and flag a positive sign.
High Peace Council member Shahzada Shahid said Saturday that it was too early to say when members of the council would travel to Qatar for talks. He also welcomed the participation of countries in the international coalition in Afghanistan and said they would have their own issues to discuss.
“Peace is very important and vital for us so we will take all measures for it,” he said.
The Taliban recently agreed to hand over U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, captured in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009, in exchange for five Taliban members held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Suhail also said that a cease-fire and women’s rightscould be part of negotiations.
“It can be part of the agenda and be discussed, also foreign troops in Afghanistan after 2014 can be discussed as part of the agenda as well as the general concerns of the Afghan people,” he said. “How can we achieve all those things if even from the first day there is so much public criticism?”
In other developments, Bergdahl’s father and mother, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, spoke Saturday to about 2,000 people at a Bring Bowe Back celebration in Hailey, Idaho, their hometown.
“We are feeling very optimistic this week,” a tearful Jani Bergdahl said before addressing her son directly. “Bowe, we love you, we support you, and are eagerly awaiting your return home.”
Also on Saturday, Taliban militants attacked local security checkpoints in a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan, killing two policemen in a fight that also left 18 insurgents dead, Afghan officials said.
NATO said a coalition service member also died in a militant attack in the south Saturday, but did not provide further details.
In northern Afghanistan, Kunduz provincial police spokesman Sayed Sarwar Hussaini said Saturday that the Taliban attacked multiple checkpoints around noon Friday in Kunduz, killing one member of the Afghan local police, a community-based force, and wounding two.
The Taliban then moved outside the city where a gun battle with Afghan security forces lasted until about midnight, Hussaini said.
Separately, an Australian special forces soldier has been killed and two of his fellow troops were wounded in a gunbattle with insurgents in southern Afghanistan.
The soldier, whose name had not been released at the request of his family, waskilled Saturday on his fifth tour of Afghanistan. He was the 40th Australian casualty of the campaign and the first since October.
Information for this article was contributed by John Miller, Rahim Faiez, David Rising, Rob McGuirk and Colleen Barry of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 8 on 06/23/2013