Afghan negotiator denies offer of posts to rebels

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan has not offered government positions to followers of a wanted guerrilla chief, an Afghan negotiator said on Sunday, after a newspaper reported such a deal was being planned as part of talks to end fighting.

The government of President Hamid Karzai has confirmed in recent weeks that it has begun talks with insurgents in the hopes of making peace, part of a strategy endorsed by the new U.S. administration of President Barack Obama.

Britain's Sunday Times newspaper said Karzai would offer cabinet posts and governorships to followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar if they lay down arms. Washington has offered a multi-million dollar bounty for Hekmatyar's capture or killing.

But Arif Noorzai, a former cabinet minister and current member of parliament who is part of a team tasked by the government with reaching out to militants, said the government side had not offered jobs to Hekmatyar's followers.

"That news has no truth," he told Reuters. "When there is a breakthrough in the talks, then this issue can be discussed later. We have not reached that stage yet to say to Hekmatyar, 'this ministry or that ministry is yours'."

Hekmatyar, a former U.S.-backed anti-Soviet guerrilla leader and civil war commander, has fought U.S. forces and the Afghan government since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

His hardline Islamist followers -- separate from the Taliban but sharing some tactics and aims -- are potent east of Kabul, and are believed to have been behind an attack that killed 10 French soldiers last year.

Under the deal described by the Sunday Times, Hekmatyar would agree to go into exile in Saudi Arabia for three years, after which Washington would remove him from its wanted list. The paper gave no indication how it had obtained the information.