By IRNA,
Kabul : Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, said Sunday that he would guarantee the safety of the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar if Omar agreed to negotiate for a peaceful settlement of the worsening conflict in the country.
Omar, a fugitive with a $10 million American bounty on his head, has been in hiding since the Taliban were toppled from power in 2001, and is believed by Western intelligence agencies to be living somewhere in the region of Quetta in western Pakistan.
At a news conference in Kabul, the Afghan capital, Karzai coupled his offer of safe passage to Omar with a warning to the Western nations that support his government, saying that if they opposed an assurance of safety for Omar they would have to remove Karzai as president or withdraw their troops from Afghanistan.
Bush administration officials on Sunday were skeptical of the proposal, but, they did not reject it outright.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Omar had yet to demonstrate “a willingness to negotiate.” “We’re not seeing any indication from Mullah Omar that he is ready to renounce violence, break all ties to al-Qaeda and support the Afghan government and Constitution,” Johndroe said.
No Taliban leader of stature has responded positively to Karzai’s appeals for talks, and statements attributed to Omar, and to other major Taliban figures, have rejected talks for any purpose other than ensuring the departure of the 65,000 foreign troops, about half of them Americans.