Updated at: 0640 PST, Wednesday, November 02, 2011
 WASHINGTON: The United States should negotiate first with Afghanistan's neighbors before sitting down with the Taliban over how to end the decade-long war, ex-US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said Tuesday.
In a thinly-veiled critique of White House policy, the elder statesman also said Washington had severely curtailed its ability to reach a settlement in Afghanistan due to unnecessarily telegraphing the departure of US troops.
"I have no objection in principle to negotiating with the Taliban," Kissinger told an audience at a panel discussion at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, a think-tank in Washington. "But for the purpose of ending the war, it's the wrong sequence of events. The first negotiation in my view ought to be with surrounding countries," including Pakistan, India and Iran.
"If there is a negotiation with the Taliban, it should be in the framework of a multilateral regional negotiation," Kissinger said, adding that "extrication from a war like this is extremely difficult."
Kissinger insisted that US leverage would evaporate if it pulls its troops out ahead of a settlement. "If you negotiate while your forces are withdrawing, you're not in a great negotiating position," he said.
But he said the "fundamental political objective" of the Afghanistan war was essentially not achievable within the time frame that Americans have come to accept for US military intervention overseas.
In US wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Kissinger said, "we selected objectives beyond the capacity of the American domestic consensus to support over the period required to implement them."
In Afghanistan, a US withdrawal likely would have a greater effect on Afghanistan's neighbors than on the United States itself, Kissinger said.
He called on the region's nations to take a greater role in reaching an Afghan solution, saying regional powers have a shared interest in preventing Al-Qaeda from regaining a foothold in Afghanistan. (AFP) |
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