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The prisoner exchange issue is rife with sensitivity as the United States has sought to exchange American Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, captured by the Taliban in 2009, for Afghan Taliban held in Guantanamo. It appears the prisoner exchange fell through after the Afghan authorities demanded the five prisoners be repatriated to Afghanistan, according to an Afghan official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to brief the media. The five prisoners have demanded they be allowed to go to Qatar with their families. Motasim said he wasn't told why the prisoners were not released but when they weren't the hard-liners among the Taliban took it as a sign that the United States was disingenuous, said Motasim, who acknowledged that the Taliban have set up an office in Qatar. He said the office has no official recognition as a political headquarters of the Taliban, rather it has been veiled in secrecy and the American interlocutors are engaging with them as insurgents not political representatives of at least some Afghans. Motasim said most of the Taliban who were negotiating with the Americans are on the U.N. sanctions list. The U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions against the Taliban in November 1999 for refusing to send Osama bin Laden to the United States or a third country for trial on terrorism charges in connection with the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The sanctions
-- a travel ban, arms embargo and assets freeze -- were later extended to al-Qaida. In July 2005, the council extended the sanctions again to cover affiliates and splinter groups of al-Qaida and the Taliban. "They (the U.S.) have to give political independence to the Taliban," he said. Looking ahead to next week's NATO summit in Chicago, Motasim said he had a message for participants. "The decisions of NATO should be for the good of Afghanistan and should not call for more violence. It should call for an end to the fighting, an end to the raids and killings," he said. "Afghanistan is destroyed, the people are displaced, refugees, poor people are dying in their homes and also foreigners are dying here. It should end."
[Associated
Press;
AP correspondent Amir Shah contributed to this report.
Kathy Gannon is AP Special Regional Correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan and can be followed on http://twitter.com/kathygannon.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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