The Times
Jerome Starkey in Kabul

President Karzai announced a timetable for the first round of peace talks with the Taleban yesterday as US troops admitted that they may have bombed an Afghan army base by mistake.

The Afghan President said that a grand assembly would be convened within the next six weeks to give the Taleban and other insurgent groups the opportunity to speak face-to-face to the Government. It is not clear whether any militants will attend.

The assembly would precede a major international donor conference in Kabul, Mr Karzai said. Speaking in Kabul for the first time since he returned from last week’s London conference, Mr Karzai called on militants in Pakistan to return home and make peace so that US-led forces could withdraw. The Taleban have called repeatedly for all foreign forces to leave Afghanistan as a precondition of talks.

Mr Karzai insisted the insurgents should “return to their own country and work for peace in order for us to be able to have the US and other forces to be able to have the freedom to go back home”. (Read more…)