Taliban reject invite to Afghanistan peace talks

The Taliban are invited to the negotiating table, but they aren’t coming.

The Islamist militant group made that clear Saturday, refuting reports that it would send representatives to upcoming talks involving the Afghan government, Pakistan, the United States and China in the Pakistani city of Islamabad.

“We reject all such rumors and unequivocally state that the esteemed leader of the Islamic Emirate has not authorized anyone to participate in this meeting, and neither has the Leadership Council of Islamic Emirate decided to partake in it,” the Taliban said, using another name for itself.

The announcement appears to be a significant blow to the peace talks and is a reversal from what the Taliban reportedly have done in the past.

Taliban representatives met with their Afghan government counterparts, as well as with U.S. and Chinese officials, last summer in Pakistan, officials said.

But just weeks later, the Taliban’s reported new leader (Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour) deniedin an audio message that his Sunni Islamist group was trying to work toward peace with Afghanistan’s government.

Such pronouncements haven’t stopped other parties from talking, or from trying to include the Taliban.

After conversations in Kabul on February 23, the Afghan government sent out a news release noting President Ashraf Ghani’s “strong commitment … for peace and reconciliation with Taliban groups and Hezbi Islami Hekmatyar,” the latter being another nationalist militant group.

Characterizing it as a “national priority,” Ghani called “on the Taliban and other groups to join early direct talks with the government of Afghanistan.”

And the Afghanistan, Pakistani, Chinese and U.S. governments together “invite(d) all Taliban and other groups to participate … in the first round of direct peace talks” slated for early March in Islamabad, Pakistan.

 http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/05/asia/afghanistan-taliban-violence-talks/

European leaders hopeful that Syria truce will lead to restart of peace talks

The leaders of Germany, France, Italy, Russia and the United Kingdom discussed the temporary Syrian truce on Friday (the sixth day in which it has largely held) and agreed that it has shown the potential to pave the way for more comprehensive peace talks aimed at ending the six-year-old conflict in that country.

“The main point that the European leaders made on the call to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin was that we welcome the fact that this fragile truce appears to be holding,” a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said according to the BBC.

“We have got to use this as a positive dynamic now to create some momentum behind the talks… so we can move from a truce into a more lasting durable peace with a political transition away from Assad,” the spokesman added.

“We have asked Russia to exert its influence to ensure this [truce] will also apply to the Assad regime,” said the German Chancellor Angela Merkel after praising Russia’s commitment to abide by the agreement.

The United Nations’ special envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura also said he wants to recommence peace talks which faltered late last month after Russia backed a major Syrian ground offensive against opposition groups in the major Syrian city of Aleppo.

The European powers are urging the opposition to return to the peace talks but also stated that the delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged areas and the continued upholding of the ceasefire are the two most essential elements to successfully re-initiating talks.

“If these two conditions are not met, then the negotiation process is bound to fail, which we do not want,” said France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault  to journalists in the French capital Paris.

Clashes which took place across the country since its implementation last week have not compromised the overall agreement. Regime and opposition groups have both accused each other of violating the truce in certain flash-points across the war-torn country.

On Friday the controversial Jaish al-Islam group (which is represented at the peace talks as a genuine opposition group) claimed the regime was re-ordering its forces and aiming to retake more territory from the opposition. One representative of the group, Mohamad Alloush, told Reuters that “big violations by the regime” have been underway in opposition-held areas, they are also deploying “all types of weapons, particularly barrel bombs in some areas.”

http://rudaw.net/NewsDetails.aspx?pageid=199208

UN prepares to leverage Syria truce into peace talks

Talks between embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad and the rebels fighting for his overthrow were set to begin on Monday.

They have since been twice delayed. But the envoy is confident that “proximity” talks – de Mistura and his staff will relay messages to each side, camped in different conference rooms – will finally begin in earnest in the days to come, building off the first genuine pause in fighting since the civil war began.

Those talks are likely to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict, in mid-March of 2011, when protests against Assad’s rule went national and the government attempted a military crackdown on unsettled civilian populations.

For the first time in years, Syrians have felt safe enough to reenter the streets in protest now that regime barrel bombs and Russian air strikes have largely abated.

The streets of an Idlib province town transformed on Friday into a river of rebel flags – a celebration of the cease-fire, as much as a demonstration of the conviction many Syrians hold that Assad must depart his office.

That remains the greatest challenge of the political process taking place in Geneva, where Assad’s allies – Russia and Iran – argue that he remains the only legitimate ruler of Syria. Turkey, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf Arab nations and the United States say that Assad is the primary agitator of the conflict and a war criminal who has lost all legitimacy.

 

 

US, Russia back UN plan to restart Syrian peace talks

The United Nations envoy to Syria is trying to parlay a week-old ceasefire into peace talks that would begin on Wednesday in a staggered start.

“I see us beginning on March 10 when we will launch the process,” said envoy Staffan de Mistura. “Some [participants] will arrive on the ninth. Others, because of difficulties with hotel reservations, will arrive on the 11th. Others will arrive on the 14th.”

The negotiations would be held indirectly, meaning that the warring sides would not meet face-to-face.

“We will hold preparatory meetings and then go into detail with each group separately,” he said.

Whether the talks get off the ground remains to be seen as the key opposition group is balking. While international observers say the ceasefire is largely holding, the main opposition group – the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) – said parts of the country remain under siege.

While some of that fighting is the result of continued combat with the Islamic State and the al-Qaeda backed al-Nusra Front, which have both been excluded from the ceasefire, HNC sites are also being hit by Russian and Syrian bombers, and one aid agency says 135 people have been killed in areas included in the ceasefire.

http://www.dw.com/en/us-russia-back-un-plan-to-restart-syrian-peace-talks/a-19096268

Syrian ceasefire with Russian backing key to peace talks, say European leaders

The Syrian ceasefire and its continued backing from Russia will help build a momentum behind peace talks in the war-torn country, European leaders have said.

The truce, which is broadly holding, began last weekend. The leaders of Russia, Germany, France, Italy and the UK held a conference call on Friday in which they agreed to use the “positive dynamic” to restart peace talks, a spokesperson forDavid Cameron said.

“The main point that the European leaders made on the call to [Russian president Vladimir] Putin was that we welcome the fact that this fragile truce appears to be holding,” the spokesman said.

“We have got to use this as a positive dynamic now to create some momentum behind the talks … so we can move from a truce into a more lasting, durable peace with a political transition away from Assad.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/syrian-ceasefire-russia-peace-talks-european-leaders

 

Stability, Diplomacy, Peace: Scholars Say Benefits Of Iran Deal Go Beyond Nonproliferation

 Just one day after people across the United States took to the streets to demonstrate their support for the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, over 70 prominent international relations scholars took to their pens on Thursday, signing an open statement declaring the pact to be a “strong and positive step towards stabilizing the Middle East, beyond its undeniable non-proliferation benefits.”

One of numerous declarations backing the deal in the lead-up to the U.S. congressional vote, Thursday’s missive stands out for looking beyond the nuclear component of the deal by speaking to broader benefits such as the deescalation of conflict and opening of pathways for diplomacy.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/stability-diplomacy-peace-scholars-say-benefits-of-iran-deal-go-beyond-nonproliferation/209046/

A PRESCRIPTION FOR PEACE AND PROSPERITY

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The question is often asked: “What can we do?” Here is a prescription for peace and prosperity.

We will begin with prosperity, because prosperity can contribute to peace. Sometimes governments begin wars in order to distract from unpromising economic prospects, and internal political stability can also be dependent on prosperity.

http://www.infowars.com/a-prescription-for-peace-and-prosperity/

Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy of Peace Is Central to the Message of Freedom

I had the rare honor of serving as Ron Paul’s congressional chief of staff, and observed him in many proud moments in those days, and in his presidential campaigns. But Ron’s new book Swords into Plowshares: A Life in Wartime and a Future of Peace and Prosperity, a plainspoken and relentless case against war that ranks alongside Smedley Butler’s classic War Is a Racket, is possibly the proudest Ron Paul moment of all.

It’s been calculated that over the past 5,000 years there have been 14,000 wars fought, resulting in three and a half billion deaths. In the United States, between 1798 and 2015 there have been 369 uses of military force abroad. We have been conditioned to accept this as normal, or at the very least unavoidable. We are told to stifle any moral qualms we may have about mass killing on the question-begging grounds that, after all, “it’s war.”

http://www.infowars.com/ron-pauls-foreign-policy-of-peace-is-central-to-the-message-of-freedom/