Foreign Office officials believe elements of Taliban ready to talk but fears grow of long Afghan conflict, and growing casualties

Britain will today urge the Afghan government to put more effort into the pursuit of peace talks amid fears that the war could be prolonged – and more British lives lost – as a result of incompetence and lack of political will in Kabul.

A speech to be delivered in the US by the foreign secretary, David Miliband, will reflect growing anxiety in London that President Hamid Karzai’s professed desire for a political solution has not been backed up by any serious planning or concrete proposals.

Unless more pressure is put on the Afghan government, some British officials predict that Karzai’s proposed loya jirga, or grand peace council, due at the end of next month, will be little more than a PR stunt. “My argument today is that now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigour and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort,” Miliband will say at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to a text of the address seen by the Guardian.

British officials believe that significant Taliban leaders are ready to start talking about a political settlement in which they would sever ties with al-Qaida and put down weapons in return for a role in politics. But there is also concern that opportunities to open a preliminary dialogue are being lost, and that the conflict, which has already cost more than 270 British lives, is being intensified by Kabul’s inefficiency and corruption.

“The Afghans must own, lead and drive such political engagement,” Miliband will say in his speech. “It will be a slow, gradual process. But the insurgents will want to see international support.

“International engagement, for example under the auspices of the UN, may ultimately be required.”

Karzai presented a paper on political reconciliation at a conference held by Gordon Brown in London in January. But officials who saw it, and subsequent Afghan proposals on peace talks, have variously described them as “empty” and “a C-team effort”.

Gerard Russell, at the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard University, said: “We had a look at the Afghan government’s thinking on reconciliation, but we haven’t seen a concrete proposal or a workable methodology.”

Russell, a former political adviser to the UN mission in Afghanistan, added: “There is a talk about having a loya jirga. But what is a loya jirga going to do? On its own, its not going to achieve anything.”

The growing alarm at the lack of political initiative in Kabul comes at a time when back-channel contacts with the Taliban have also run into trouble, paradoxically as a result of a Taliban arrest hailed as a triumph last month.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban’s military operations seized in Karachi by Pakistani intelligence agents, had taken part in tentative and secret contacts with Saudi intermediaries last year.

One participant in those talks told the Guardian that Baradar’s arrest had been “a huge blow” to the peace effort.

Britain’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, has been sent to Kabul as caretaker ambassador, with the primary mission of trying to inject more substance into the loya jirga planned for 29 April. Tomorrow, Miliband will also call for a direct international role in managing the peace process. Miliband’s speech also carries a message for Washington.

While Britain’s Foreign Office believes work on peace talks should begin straight away and be pushed behind the scenes by the Obama administration, most US officials, and some British generals, question whether such negotiations would produce results before Taliban morale has been depleted by the military surge.

“There is an important US audience for this,” a British official said. “Nobody wants a PR stunt in Kabul that doesn’t lead anywhere.”

Grenades set off in offices of World Vision humanitarian group

Attackers armed with grenades bombed the offices of an international aid group in north-west Pakistan today, killing five people working for the organisation, police said.

The attack targeted World Vision, a large Christian humanitarian group helping survivors of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Mansehra district.

The dead were all Pakistanis and included two women, said a police official, Mohammad Sabir.

Al-Qaida, the Taliban and allied groups are strong in north-western Pakistan, but Mansehra lies outside the tribal belt next to Afghanistan where the militants have their main bases.

Extremists have killed other people working for foreign aid groups in Pakistan and issued statements saying such organisations are working against Islam. The attacks have greatly hampered efforts to raise living standards in the desperately poor region.

Militants see the aid groups as a challenge to their authority. The aid groups often employ women and support women’s rights initiatives, angering the extremists.

Many foreign aid groups set up offices in Mansehra after the 2005 earthquake, which killed about 80,000 people.

In 2008 militants in Mansehra killed four Pakistanis working for Plan International, a British-based charity that focuses on helping children.

• 1,600 homes to be built in East Jerusalem settlement
• Vice-president says the deal undermines trust

Joe Biden, the US vice-president, condemned a plan by Israel to build 1,600 homes on occupied Palestinian land in an East Jerusalem settlement.

The Israeli interior ministry’s approval of the plan cast a cloud over a visit to the country by Biden just hours after he pledged strong support for the Israeli government.

In an unusually strong statement issued after he arrived 90 minutes late for a dinner with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said: “I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units.”

He said the blueprint for Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox settlement in an area of the West Bank annexed to Jerusalem, “undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions I’ve had in Israel”.

The approvals came just a day after the Israeli defence ministry announced that 112 apartments would be built in Beitar Illit, a settlement on the occupied West Bank. The new building comes at a delicate moment in the long-stalled peace process after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to start indirect negotiations.

The interior ministry said the Ramat Shlomo approvals had been passed by the Jerusalem district planning committee. A spokeswoman said there were 60 days to appeal against the decision. Ramat Shlomo, built 15 years ago, is on land captured in the West Bank in 1967 and annexed to Israel in a move not recognised by the international community.

Israel’s interior minister, Eli Yishai, who heads a religious party in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, said the timing of the plan’s approval was coincidental. “There was certainly no intention to provoke anyone and certainly not to come along and hurt the vice-president of the United States,” Yishai told Israel’s Channel One television.

“Final approval [for the project] will take another few months. I agree that the timing [of the announcement] should have been in another two or three weeks.”

Two years ago, when the Israeli government approved 1,300 homes in the same settlement, then US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, criticised the move as having a “negative effect” on peace talks.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said the announcements were “destroying our efforts” in peace negotiations.

“With such an announcement, how can you build trust?” he said. “It’s a disastrous situation.”

Earlier in the day, Biden said Israel and the Palestinians needed to “take risks for peace”. But his talk of a “moment of opportunity” obscures a reality in which the two sides are a long way apart. Although the peace process has been under way for nearly two decades, there have been no direct negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders since Israel’s war in Gaza a year ago.

Palestinian officials refused to hold direct talks unless Israel halted all settlement construction, in line with the demands of the US administration and of the US road map. But Netanyahu, agreed only to a temporary, partial curb to settlement building. It did not include East Jerusalem, or public buildings, or homes where construction had already started.

In talks with Netanyahu, Biden appeared to focus not on the struggling peace process but on Iran, saying Washington was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “There is no space between the US and Israel when it comes to Israel’s security,” Biden said after their meeting.

“We are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” Biden said.

In private, he is also believed to have cautioned the Israeli government against any unilateral military strike on Iran, and to have tried to win Israeli support for the US administration’s policy, which is moving towards sanctions against Iran.

Netanyahu made clear the Israeli government hoped for a tougher sanction regime against Iran. “The stronger those sanctions are, the more likely it will be that the Iranian regime will have to chose between advancing its nuclear programme and advancing the future of its own permanence,” he said. Netanyahu frequently cites the need to address Iran’s nuclear ambitions as his priority in government and Israeli leaders have pointedly not ruled out a military option.

Kurdish alliance set to play prominent role in coalition government despite Gorran group breaking away

A strong turnout from Iraq’s Kurds in national elections on Sunday has enhanced their status of kingmakers in forming the central government, with preliminary voting results expected within 24 hours.

The electoral commission said today that votes had now all been counted, although the official results will not be declared until the end of March.

The ballot appears to have narrowly favoured the political list of the incumbent prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, but the rival bloc of former leader Iyad Alawi is also predicted to have performed well. Whoever wins will have to form a coalition in order to build a government, with the Kurds expected to play a prominent role.

However for the first time, a nascent Kurdish opposition has threatened to splinter the Kurdish alliance, whose truculent factions have invariably united when dealing with post-Saddam Baghdad. The allegiances of a breakaway Kurdish group, Gorran, are an unknown factor in the post-election negotiations. Gorran is thought to have won about 15 seats in the new 325 seat parliament, damaging the bloc of warlord turned president Jalal Talabani, who wants a second term as Iraq’s head of state.

Even if Maliki, or his bloc, ends up with the most popular votes, his claim on the prime ministership remains heavily contingent on his ability to appease potential coalition partners and the residual wrath of any enemies he has made during the past four turbulent years. Maliki’s supporters were privately claiming today that he has won as many as 85 seats in the new parliament, having swept the south and performed solidly in Baghdad.

Alwai’s backers were equally upbeat, with a senior figure in Iraqiya, the secular alliance he took to the election, also claiming the party had won 85 seats. In private, officials are hoping for as many as 110.

A total of 38 people were killed in violence that heralded Sunday’s ballot, but so far there have been no claims of vote-rigging or fraud. Election observers have generally endorsed the conduct of the election, which saw a 62% turnout nationwide, and up to a 73% showing of registered voters at provinces that had boycotted the previous poll.

10. Three’s Company. Premiered in the 1970s when the show’s content was considered shocking. A guy who lived with two girls was taboo. Very much taboo.

Nine. The Dick Van Dyke Show. Just about everybody on this show was hilarious. An absolute classic.

8. Arrested Development. A newer show created by Ron Howard. Based on the lives of the once wealthy Bluth family. Very funny and unfortunately did not last a very long time on the air.

7. It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. A very funny show which gives off the same vibe as Seinfeld but with a more adult theme added to it. You will love the characters.

I Love Lucy. This very funny show has been showing on the air since 1951. Obviously, re-runs but still funny even in today’s standards. This show has many die-hard fans proven by the I Love Lucy conventions every year.

5. Curb Your Enthusiasm comes from the creator of Seinfeld. A very funny television show which tends to use some profanity during the episodes. Very funny and packed with sexual innuendos.

The Simpsons. If you haven’t seen an episode of The Simpsons any time in the past 20 years, than you must be living under a rock. The Simpson family has delivered more laughs than the entire Just For Laughs festival.

Three. All In The Family. Not slap stick, laughing and rolling out of your chair funny, but funny just the same and incredibly ground breaking.

Two. Seinfeld. Always classified as the funniest sitcom of all time, even though it was often called “The show about nothing.” It was not only consistently funny, they knew when to end it. Seinfeld went out with a bang. For those who have watched the entire series, you will note that the show began and ended with the same sentence.

The Honeymooners. How funny can 4 characters in a kitchen be? Apparently, very funny. Insanely funny in fact and this show is still being aired on television for that very fact.

This article was written and provided by Wayne Torres; if you got a kick out of it or found in interesting, you can visit Wayne at Watch the Inbetweeners Episodes Online and Watch the Sopranos Episodes Online.