Pakistan confirmed Saturday that it was holding talks with a senior Taliban commander on the makeup of a future Afghan government -- a move that drew a sharp retort from the opposition alliance that is fighting the Islamic militia in the north.
Pakistan is trying to court Taliban figures who might be acceptable candidates in a new government if the ruling militia collapses under the relentless US military assault.
It wants to ensure that the next government includes members favorable to Pakistan, which had been the Taliban's closest ally until last month's terrorist attacks in the US and President Pervez Musharraf's decision to back the US-led anti-terrorism campaign.
During a press conference Saturday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan confirmed that key officials were meeting in Pakistan with Mullah Jalaluddin Haqqani, a major Taliban commander in Khost province, to discuss participation in a broad-based replacement government.
Haqqani, however, showed no signs of switching allegiances and was quoted by a Pakistani newspaper as saying he was eagerly awaiting the fight against US ground troops.
Haqqani was a leading commander during the 1979 to 1989 war against Soviet invaders and was even received at the White House by former president Ronald Reagan. The Cold War-era US supported fighters who battled the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Last week, Pakistani sources said Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil made a secret trip to Islamabad and asked Pakistan to urge the US to slow its bombing campaign to give Taliban moderates time to reassess their refusal to hand over terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden.
Both Muttawakil and Haqqani have showed no public sign of breaking with the Taliban's hard-line leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Haqqani told the Pakistani newspaper that the Taliban were "eagerly awaiting the American troops" so they can "deal with them in our own way."
Muttawakil, who was even rumored to have defected, returned to Afghanistan, where he said there was no truth to rumors of divisions in Taliban ranks, nor to reports circulated by the opposition that key tribal leaders were joining the Northern Alliance.
Western diplomatic sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it appeared that no major figure within the Taliban has publicly switched sides, although they did not rule out that some minor figures in remote areas may have made overtures to the opposition.
In an interview published Saturday by the Pakistani newspaper The News, Haqqani said there was "absolutely no truth" to claims of defections. He did not explain why he was in Pakistan, but he said that any "broad-based government" which was secular rather than Islamic "will never be acceptable to the Afghans."
"No one from the Taliban will be a part of such an unacceptable government which will be filled with American, Russian and Indian stooges," he said.
However, the fact that Pakistan is maintaining contacts with Taliban figures has enraged the Northern Alliance. The alliance fears that Pakistan might convince the US to sideline the opposition once the Taliban falls.
The opposition's fears increased Tuesday when Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Islamabad that the US would be open to contacts with certain Taliban moderates once the regime had collapsed.
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