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Moderate Taliban offered truce, Kabul claims

* Taliban commander blamed for rocket attacks captured
* Atta and Dostam face banishment to Kabul
* Taliban commander captured

KABUL: Former Taliban officials have contacted the Afghan government and offered to cooperate, after months of deadly attacks on aid workers and troops, a spokesman for President Hamid Karzai said on Monday.

“They contacted the government and said they were ready to cooperate with the government if it wanted. They have said they are ready to do their best to help the government,” Jaweduddin told a press briefing in Kabul. He didn’t say when the contact was made.

Jaweduddin, however, declined to name the officials but said they were moderate members of the hard-line regime, which was toppled from power under a United States-led military assault which began two years ago. “It was a number of Taliban who were involved in the Taliban government. Our understanding up to now is that they were not those Taliban whose hands were polluted with people’s blood and they are not known criminals,” Karzai’s spokesman said.

The bid by the moderates to join hands with Karzai’s administration comes amid a surge in violence by fighters loyal to the fundamentalist militia, who have been attacking aid workers, US troops and Afghan security forces mainly in Afghanistan’s southeast. US military officials have accused the Taliban of trying to destabilise Karzai’s administration and re-install their own regime.

Jaweduddin said the government had not decided whether to negotiate with the Taliban moderates or not. “Up to now the government has not made any decision in this regard. “As far as the question of negotiation with the Taliban is concerned, there hasn’t been any negotiation with them.”

US-led forces in Afghanistan said on Monday they had captured a Taliban commander thought responsible for rocket attacks on a base in southern Afghanistan.

A statement from the US military said Mullah Janan was captured by special forces soldiers in an operation with Afghan Militia Forces (AMF) near the US base at Deh Rawud in Uruzgan province on Sunday night. “Janan was observed leaving the area by coalition special operations forces,” it said. “He was brought under control at an AMF checkpoint as he attempted to flee the area.” The statement gave no further details.

The Afghan government may pull rival warlords Atta Mohammad and Abdul Rashid Dostam out of their northern strongholds and transfer them to Kabul in a bid to curtail fighting, a senior official said.

Taliban commander captured: A senior Taliban commander has been captured by coalition forces in central Afghanistan with the help of Afghan soldiers, a spokesman for the US military headquarters in Bagram said. Mullah Janan, believed to have been the Taliban’s coordinator with the Al Qaeda, was captured near Deh Rawod in the central province of Uruzgan, Col Rodney Davis said .—Agencies

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