Kabul blames UK for Taliban imposter

Taliban militants in Afghanistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's chief of staff says British diplomats brought a fake Taliban commander to sensitive government meetings.

Mohammad Umer Daudzai made remarks in an interview with The Washington Post on Thursday. 

"The last lesson we draw from this: International partners should not get excited so quickly with those kind of things." 

The imposter tried to impersonate Taliban commander Mullah Mansour. He disappeared after an employee who knew the real Mansour raised the alarm. 

The imposter is said to have met with Afghan officials three times and flown on a NATO aircraft to Kabul. 

It appears that he was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to take on the role. British officials say the money came from the Afghan government not the UK. 

But the British newspaper The Times says the imposter was planted by the UK's MI6 overseas spying agency. 

An unnamed US official has also told Washington post that the Mansour impersonator was the Brit's Guy. 

Karzai recently formed a peace council to lead talks with the Taliban, electing Afghanistan's former President Burhanuddin Rabbani as chairman of the council. 

The newly-established peace council has been making efforts to initiate dialogue with discontented Afghans and militants who have engaged in warfare with the government. 

The council has expressed willingness to listen to legitimate demands by the militants. 

The development comes after senior officials in the UK floated the idea of making peace with the Taliban whose uprooting was one of the main objectives of the 2001 US-led invasion. 

The US-led invasion was launched with the official objective of curbing militancy and bringing peace and stability to the war-ravaged country. 

Anti-war groups have highlighted the fact that Afghanistan remains unstable nine years after the invasion. 

The Taliban have repeatedly rejected peace talks, calling for the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces from Afghanistan. http://pakarmydefence.blogspot.com/2010/11/kabul-blames-uk-for-taliban-imposter.html