"We Must Talk To Al-Qaida"

Top Blair Aide: We Must Talk To Al-Qaida

Former No 10 chief says Irish peace process showed link to enemy needed

By Ian Katz
Saturday March 15 2008
Courtesy Of The Guardian

Western governments must talk to terror groups including al-Qaida and the Taliban if they hope to secure a long-term halt to their campaigns of violence, according to the man who for more than a decade was Tony Blair's most influential aide and adviser.

Jonathan Powell, who served as Blair's chief of staff from 1995 to 2007 and is widely regarded as having been instrumental in negotiating a settlement in Northern Ireland, said his experience in the province convinced him that it was essential to keep a line of communication open even with one's most bitter enemies.

Powell said: "There's nothing to say to al-Qaida and they've got nothing to say to us at the moment, but at some stage you're going to have to come to a political solution as well as a security solution. And that means you need the ability to talk."
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Powell, the most senior member of the Blair circle to survive the prime minister's full term in office, said that he had realised, after reviewing government papers and his diaries, that a secret back channel between the British government and the IRA, first opened in the 1970s, was one of the key factors that contributed to a peace deal three decades later.

"It's very difficult for democratic governments to do - talk to a terrorist movement that's killing your people," he said.

"[But] if I was in government now I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban; and I would want to find a channel to al-Qaida."

Powell's remarks will be highly controversial, as all western governments have insisted any contact with al-Qaida would be immoral and pointless.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said last night: "It is inconceivable that HMG would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with a terrorist organisation like al-Qaida."

The government's position on the Taliban and Hamas has been more nuanced: it did communicate with the Palestinian group for a period through an MI6 officer, but broke off contact and now insists Hamas must recognise Israel and end violence before talks can resume.

In December Brown ruled out talking to the Taliban leadership, but said he would "support [Afghanistan's] President Karzai in his efforts at reconciliation".

Powell, whose book, Great Hatred, Little Room, will be serialised exclusively in the Guardian from Monday, conceded that the idea of talking to al-Qaida and the Taliban was fraught with practical problems: "Who do you talk to? And what do you actually have to talk about?"
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