BRUSSELS: US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday urged Afghanistan’s Taliban militants to follow the recent example of a notorious warlord and make an “honorable” peace with the Kabul government. “There is a path toward an honorable end to the conflict that the Taliban have waged—it is a conflict that cannot be won on the battlefield,” Kerry told an international donor conference in Brussels. Kerry said a peace deal signed last month by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who heads the Hezb-i-Islami group and was a key figure in Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, was a “model for what might be possible.”“The message for the Taliban would be: take note,” he said. Kerry added that a peace deal would in fact achieve the Taliban’s aim of expelling foreign forces from Afghanistan, 15 years after a US-led invasion drove the Islamist group from power. “Their goal of ridding Afghanistan of external forces will not come by the continued insurgency, it will come by peace.” AFPAFP/CC

Source: Manila Times October 05, 2016 08:48 UTC