Expert says regional peace deal needed in Afghanistan

LONDON - The United States should broker a regional peace settlement in Afghanistan with the help of regional powers, a leading British international terrorism expert urged.

Anatol Lieven, chair of International Relations and Terrorism Studies at King's College London, said Taliban insurgents should be accepted as a political force in Afghanistan through talks as the country would otherwise fall into a civil war after 2014, when most international troops are set to leave.

"I think America's biggest role in the future could, and should, be to broker a regional peace settlement rather than trying to devise or dictate a peace settlement itself," said Lieven, who covered the Soviet war in Afghanistan as a journalist in the 1980s.