Karzai severs talks with Taliban

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Saturday he is ditching peace talks with the Taliban after the assassination of a former president and peace leader. Karzai said peace negotiations with the Taliban were off based on intelligence reports that former President Berhanuddin Rabbani was killed by a Taliban member who claimed to be a peace emissary and detonated a bomb at Rabbani's home Sept. 20. Rabbani had been the chief peace negotiator with the Taliban for the past year. At a meeting of religious leaders, Karzai said intelligence reports indicated the bombing was planned by Taliban members in neighboring Pakistan and he was abandoning talks with locals, the BBC said. "A messenger comes disguised as a Taliban council member and kills, and they neither confirm nor reject it," he said. "Therefore, we cannot talk to anyone but to Pakistan." At a news conference in Kabul, Lutfullah Mashal, Afghanistan's intelligence service spokesman, said there was "concrete evidence" Taliban leaders in the Pakistan city of Quetta were responsible for the bombing, CNN said.