NEGOTIATIONS

Karzai: Talks With Taliban Have Begun

Says majority of fighters want peace.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says his government is in direct talks with the Taliban, along with the United States. "There have been contacts between the U.S. government and the Taliban, there have been contacts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and there have been some contacts that we have made, all of us together, including the Taliban," he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview. It's somewhat surprising that the Taliban would talk directly with the Afghan government: since they were ousted in 2001, the Taliban has insisted they are the real Afghan government and have refused to talk with the “puppet government,” though they've been open to talks with the U.S. Karzai also said that the majority of Taliban fighters are "definitively willing to seek peace.”