Zardari met Taliban leaders in prison: Report

LONDON - Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari recently met captured Taliban leaders in a prison to assure them that the outfit had his government’s full support, a media report said Sunday.

Zardari also assured the Taliban prisoners that they would be released soon, The Sunday Times reported.

A senior Taliban source in regular contact with members of the Quetta shura (Taliban war council) told The Sunday Times that in early April, Zardari along with a senior Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official met 50 high-ranking Taliban members at a prison in Pakistan.

This was vigorously denied by Zardari’s spokesman, the report said.

“You are our people, we are friends, and after your release we will of course support you to do your operations,” Zardari was quoted as saying by the source.

Vowing to release the less well-known commanders in the near future, he said that the “famous” Taliban leaders would be freed at a later date.

Five days after Zardari’s visit, a handful of Taliban prisoners, including The Sunday Times’s source, were set free, the report said.

Zardari apparently explained the Taliban leaders that he had arrested them because his government was under increasing American pressure to end the sanctuary enjoyed by the Taliban in Pakistan.

According to a Taliban leader in the jail at the time of the Pakistan president’s alleged visit, five days before the meeting prison officials were told to prepare for the impending presidential call.

“They wanted to make the prisoners feel like they were important and respected,” the source said.

During his visit to the prison, Zardari also met Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s former second in command, who was arrested earlier this year with seven other Taliban leaders, the report said citing the source.

Baradar, who is from the same tribe as Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, had allegedly approached the Afghan government to discuss the prospect of a peace settlement between the two sides.

Baradar’s arrest is seen in both diplomatic and Taliban circles as an ISI plot to manipulate the Taliban’s political hierarchy and also to block negotiations between the Kabul government and the Taliban leadership, the report said.

The ISI is said to be represented on the Quetta shura.

While the prison that Zardari visited was not specified, the fact that he met Baradar indicates it was in Karachi.