Afghans give Pakistan evidence in Rabbani killing

[October 01, 2011]  KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan's intelligence service said Saturday it has given Pakistan hard evidence that former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani's assassination was planned in the southern outskirts of the Pakistani city of Quetta where key Taliban leaders are based.

In the wake of Rabbani's death, the Afghan government has said it no longer thinks negotiations with the Taliban can be productive and that there should be negotiations with Pakistan instead.

The Taliban have not claimed responsibility for killing Rabbani, who headed the Afghan government's effort to broker peace with the insurgents.

A suicide bomber claiming to be a peace emissary from the Taliban killed Rabbani at the former president's home on Sept. 20 by detonating a bomb hidden in his turban.

Rabbani's death was a major setback to U.S.-backed efforts to broker peace with insurgents and end the nearly decade-long war.

On the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York last week, an Afghan intelligence official said Rabbani's death was plotted for four months by the Afghan Taliban's governing council known as the Quetta Shura, named after the city in southern Pakistan.

Lutifullah Mashal, a spokesman for the Afghan intelligence service, provided the first details about where the assassination was allegedly planned at a news conference on Saturday.

"The place where Professor Rabbani's killing was planned is a town called Satellite near Quetta, Pakistan," Mashal told reporters. "The key person involved in the assassination of Rabbani has been arrested and he has provided lots of strong evidence about where and how it was planned. We have given all that evidence to the Pakistan embassy."

The Afghan intelligence documents handed over to Pakistan's embassy in Kabul include the address, photographs and a layout of a house in Satellite, Mashal said. He said the Pakistanis also have been provided with the names of individuals who discussed Rabbani's assassination at the house in Satellite.

Mashal would not disclose the identity of the person in custody, saying only that he was a second-tier figure within the Taliban hierarchy.

He said additional details soon would be released by a commission set up to investigate Rabbani's death.

Asked what Afghanistan expected Pakistan to do with the information, Mashal referred the question to the Afghan Foreign Ministry and the commission.

"This is all concrete evidence that nobody can ignore," he said.

Earlier this week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with top government, religious, political and jihadi leaders to discuss the peace effort and Afghanistan's relations with the U.S., the European Union and NATO.

The Afghan leaders said the Taliban have responded to peace overtures to peace by killing Afghanis, according to a statement released by Karzai's office after the meeting.

"With the assassination of Rabbani and the recent killings of other high-ranking people, the Taliban have shown they don't have the authority to have negotiations about peace in Afghanistan," the statement said.

It said that Pakistan has failed to take steps to eliminate terrorist sanctuaries and that if Pakistan's intelligence service is using the Taliban against Afghanistan, then the Afghan government needs to have negotiations with Pakistan, "not the Taliban."

[Associated Press; By RAHIM FAIEZ]

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