Afghan government under pressure to make peace with Taliban

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ABC (Radio Australia), 29 October 2013

Discussing the latest British attempt to get Pakistan and Afghanistan cooperating on Taleban talks, AAN’s Thomas Ruttig is quoted (listen to an audio file):

“[Interviewer:] Pakistan is the Taliban’s strongest backer – if peace is going to prevail, Pakistan needs to drag the militants to the negotiating table. But Thomas Ruttig isn’t confident the latest round of discussions will achieve anything.

THOMAS RUTTIG: There’s a regional game going on about influence over Afghanistan, look in Pakistan and Iran and a lot of other regional players and neighbours. And so the Pakistanis, frankly they are calculating in a very sober way. The Taliban are a trump card in that game and I don’t see that they give that away.”

The summary transcript contains some mistakes, though, for example. The following sentence should have a NOT: “is NOT the first attempt to get Pakistan and Afghanistan together by the British government to get talks with the Taliban starting”.