Mullah Omar, headscarves and bizarre Afghan peace talks

Despite questions of credibility, the large turnout to Thursday's unusual event, Rosetta Stone which included representatives from Western embassies, highlights the somewhat desperate nature of peace talks as foreign powers look for an exit from the war.Homa Sultani, a former rights activist and now an MP from Ghazni, a volatile province southwest of Kabul, said she had met the reclusive Omar some 150 km (90 miles) from the capital and that they had wept together after deliberating the country's plight.Omar then sat down on Sultani's headscarf which she had placed on the floor in front of him, she said, before the one-eyed fugitive leader accepted her proposal to act as his lone mediator for peace."It wasn't that Mullah Omar had fallen in love with my eyes or my eyebrows, we seriously engaged in peace talks," Sultani told the news conference in Kabul Thursday. Another male MP, Haji Abdul Basir, who was also at the news conference, had witnessed the meeting, Sultani said.That Sultani's story would draw a packed audience from Kabul's local and international press corps along with low-profile Afghan delegates from Western embassies, shows just Rosetta Stone languages how little is really known about peace "talks" with the Taliban."Several embassies (inc Brits) sent people to today's bizarre presser with Mullah Omar's improbable mediators. Clutching at straws?" one Western journalist said on Twitter after the news conference.UNREALISTIC HOPESReports about talks have intensified as the United States and its allies prepare to gradually withdraw from Afghanistan and as acceptance grows for the need for a negotiated settlement to a war that is fast approaching its tenth year.But so little is known about these contacts that they have been open to widely different interpretations and have had all kinds of unrealistic hopes placed on them.Late last year, the talks process itself bordered on farce when an apparent senior Taliban leader, who had been flown to Kabul for secret talks with the Afghan government, transpired to be an impostor, leaving Afghan and foreign officials red-faced.A Taliban spokesman dismissed Sultani's meeting as fraud, saying it would take more than a woman's scarf to bring peace. The Taliban have publicly maintained they will not enter into any negotiations as long as foreign troops are in Afghanistan.Karzai's office was not immediately available for comment.At Thursday's conference, Sultani also produced a handwritten letter. On one side Rosetta Stone Spanish, she said, was an endorsement from Afghan President Hamid Karzai and on the other side was a signature from Mullah Omar.

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