Military Action Not Enough: Afghanistan Minister

Military Action Not Enough: Afghanistan Minister (NSI News Source Info) KABUL - October 6, 2008: Military action alone will not solve Afghanistan's conflict, which must also be tackled on the political front, the defense minister said October 5 amid fresh talk about negotiations with Taliban. "The war that we are fighting now does not have only a military solution," Defense Minister Mohammad Rahim Wardak told reporters. "We have to fight it on different fronts, political, military and financial fronts," he said. Karzai last week called on fugitive militant leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is on a U.S. "most wanted" list, to step forward for negotiations to end a seven-year-long insurgency that has paralyzed post-Taliban reconstruction. He said he had been asking Saudi Arabia for two years to help engage the Taliban militia in peace talks. Wardak reiterated the Afghan government position that negotiations with Taliban were with the condition that the militants accept the post-Taliban constitution. "Anyone who wants to get to power should try political means and elections," he said. In September 2007, the Afghan president said for the first time that he was ready to talk to Mullah Omar after earlier saying that he wanted negotiations with lower-level militant leaders. Afghan and international efforts to defeat the Taliban on the battlefield have made little headway with the violence only mounting year on year, raising alarm in a country trying to rebuild after decades of war.