Top Taliban negotiator in secret talks with Afghan officials an ISI ‘impostor’?
Afghanistan News.Net
23rd November, 2010 (ANI)
Top US and Afghan officials have apparently been conned by a man claiming to be a leading Taliban negotiator in secret talks with Afghan officials.
For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement, The New York Times reported.
But now, it turns out that Mansour was apparently not Mansour at all, as US and Afghan officials now say that the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little, it added.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
On Monday, American officials confirmed that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership, the paper said. Continue reading “Taliban Impostor Hoax”