Taliban on agenda for'Job offers'

A bid to lure Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with job offers will be high on the agenda when up to 70 countries meet for crucial talks on the future of Afghanistan.

The high-level event was convened in a bid to draw up a blueprint for Afghan forces to gradually take over responsibility for growing areas of their country - paving the way for the eventual withdrawal of international troops, who have been in the country since 2001.

Despite increasing public concerns over mounting military losses, however, it will not set any dates for withdrawal, with one senior diplomat predicting they could be there for another 15 years. Troop numbers are higher than ever and some of the 9,500 British forces in Southern Afghanistan are set to join a renewed Nato push to "assert control" over some parts of Helmand province.
Agreement to fund the Kabul-run scheme, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai is to detail at the one-day London conference, will be sought from international partners engaged in the campaign.

Mr Karzai will also face pressure to agree higher targets for boosting the size of the homegrown army and police and for tougher measures to tackle widespread corruption.

But officials also hope the conference will showcase a beefed up effort to better co-ordinate aid and reconstruction efforts, pave the way for an economic help programme from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and secure stronger commitments of support from Afghanistan's neighbours.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is co-hosting the conference with Mr Karzai and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, wants at least five Afghan provinces - and some districts of the lawless Helmand region - back in Afghan control by the end of this year.

And on Wednesday night he backed the "re-integration" proposals to offer incentives to low- and middle-ranking Taliban fighters to abandon their armed struggle with British and other Nato troops.

Under the scheme, jobs in security forces and agriculture or education would be offered in a bid to attract insurgents who were not ideologically committed to the Taliban's fight but joined because of poverty - which it is thought could amount to around half of their number.

If successful, it is hoped that it would eventually attract more senior members although officials acknowledge that there are many "irreconcilables" who will have to be fought militarily. However, Mr Karzai is yet to explain how the incentive system, which the Taliban dismissed as a "trick", would operate.