Afghanistan rules out peace talks with bin Laden
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-01-25 08:51

Afghan President Hamid Karzai ruled out ever holding talks with Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who is believed to be playing a key role in an insurgency led by the ousted Taliban.

The Saudi billionaire proposed a truce to the United States in an audiotape broadcast by the Al-Jazeera satellite television network this month in which he also warned of more attacks in the "heartland" of the United States.

Washington rejected the offer, which Karzai said he would also never accept.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a conference with provincial governors at the Presidential palace in Kabul. [AFP]

"It is for America if they want to make peace with him or not. But I, as a son of Afghanistan, want him before an Islamic court," Karzai said.

"I will not negotiate with him, there is no room for peace," he said at a ceremony to lay the foundations of a new madrassa, or Islamic religious school, in the capital Kabul.

Karzai said bin Laden should be made to account for atrocities blamed on the Taliban government, which was funded by and sheltered Al-Qaeda until it was removed in a US-led campaign in late 2001 for refusing to hand over bin Laden for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Bin Laden should be brought to justice for the "destruction of houses, orchards, vineyards -- the burning of the Koran (the Islamic holy book) in mosques and the murder of breast-feeding babies," the president said.

Karzai, whose government is battling an increasingly deadly insurgency led by the Taliban and other militants, said his country needed justice after decades of war, including the resistance to the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation in which 1.5 million Afghans were killed.

"We have given 1.5 million martyrs for Islam -- my country was invaded, we have freed it from the grip of infidels. But he (Bin Laden), under the name of my jihad (holy war), invaded my country. This land needs justice," he said.

In his message, authenticated by the CIA, bin Laden offered a "long-term truce" if Washington withdrew its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Karzai, Afghanistan's first ever elected president, has repeatedly insisted it needs the long-term support of international troops to cope with the insurgency.

About 20,000 troops in a coalition led by the United States have been in the country for four years to hunt down Taliban and other militants. Nearly 10,000 NATO-led peacekeepers are also there.

The insurgency claimed about 1,600 lives last year, many of them militants.

Afghanistan was the safe haven, operational base and training centre for the Taliban and Al-Qaeda until US forces invaded.

Karzai has offered amnesty to members of the Taliban movement and other Islamic militias if their "hands are not stained with innocent people's blood".

Hundreds of former Taliban and Islamic fighters have taken up the offer, including former Taliban foreign minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil and the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef.