Dozens of powerful Afghans including bitter rivals met with the Taliban in Doha on Sunday, amid separate talks between the US and the insurgents seeking to end 18 years of war.
Stakes are high for both sets of talks. Washington has said it wants to seal a political deal with the Taliban ahead of Afghan presidential polls due in September to allow foreign forces to begin to withdraw.
Security was tight at the luxury hotel hosting the intra-Afghan summit as around 70 delegates, who were required to surrender their phones, ushered into the hall and sat in a vast semi-circle facing a large video screen and the hosts from Qatar and Germany.
“Gathered around the table today are some of the brightest minds representing a cross-section of Afghan society,” said Markus Potzel, Germany’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, as he opened the gathering.
“Each of you will have a unique opportunity and a unique responsibility to find ways of turning violent confrontation into a peaceful debate.”
Taliban negotiator Abbas Stanikzai had a brief altercation with a security guard as he attempted to enter the secure conference area.
“We want to go to the dialogue but they are not letting us,” Stanikzai said to an officer who replied “we are not joking with you, stop shouting at us”.
But he and the rest of the Taliban delegation, which included Suhail Shaheen, the group’s Doha office spokesman, took their seats in the expansive ballroom shortly before the talks began at 0630 GMT.
– Talks in ‘personal capacity’ –
The Qatar foreign ministry special envoy on counterterrorism Mutlaq al-Qahtani said: “We are so happy to see all our Afghan brothers and sisters meeting here in Doha.”
“We want a roadmap for the future of Afghanistan,” he told reporters after the hosts left the Afghan parties with mediators to begin discussions.
The so-called intra-Afghan dialogue follows six days of direct US-Taliban talks that have been put on hold for the two day Afghan conference and are set to resume Tuesday, according to both sides.
US lead negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad said Saturday that the latest round of US-Taliban talks “have been the most productive of the rounds we’ve had with the Talibs”.
New Delhi, Jul 5: The Lok Sabha on Thursday passed The Aadhaar and Other Laws Amendment Bill with the government asserting that the use of Aadhaar is vital but voluntary and no one would be denied their benefits of welfare schemes if some individuals did not have Aadhaar cards or cannot produce them.
Union Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the strict enforcement of Aadhaar card has saved state exchequer’s money and the government has made considerable saving in implementation of various welfare measures and schemes.
Through the Aadhaar, Mr Prasad said 4.23 crore fake LPG connections and 2.98 crore fake ration cards were removed, adding that Rs 7.48 lakh crore was transferred through Direct Bank Transfer.
Aadhaar norms have been framed with so much of precautions and safeguards that “even as Law and IT Minister if I seek to know details of one’s individual information as provided in Aadhaar, actions can be taken against me”.
“Nothing can pressurise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government except the pressure of the people of India,” he said in reference to opposition members insisting that the government has come under pressure from private players.
The Minister said it has been clarified more than once that no one would be denied their benefits of welfare schemes if some individuals did not have Aadhaar cards or the inability to produce them.”The echo system of Aadhaar is very clear about it…,” he said.
He made it clear that India is committed to ‘data sovereignty’.
The bill provides for the use of Aadhaar number as proof of identity of a person, subject to authentication.
The Bill does not discriminates on either caste or religion, Mr Prasad said.
The biometric and demographic information of an individual remain in encrypted form, so right to privacy of individual is not violated, he said.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah came in the mid-speech of the IT Minister.
Earlier, participating in the debate, Congress member Manish Tewari said that certain provisions of the bill go against the spirit of the Constitution and impinge on the rights of citizens.
He said it appears the intention of the Modi government was to reduce the individuals to numbers and cautioned that ‘when last time in history this was attempted, it had devastating consequences.
He said the UPA government in 2009 had listed 13 main objectives when it came up with notification on UID.
‘It is unfortunate that the government decided to pick only one of them which is defined as use and applicability of UID…in order to frame a legal architecture for a framework which had been in place,’ he said.
Mr Tewari said the intention of Aadhaar was to provide identity proof to individuals who did not have one. But in 2016, the Modi government insisted to make only Aadhaar as the identity proof to provide financial assistance to the beneficiaries of the welfare schemes.
The Bill replaces this provision to state that an individual may voluntarily use his Aadhaar number to establish his identity, by authentication or offline verification.
The Bill states that authentication of an individual’s identity via Aadhaar, for the provision of any service, may be made mandatory only by a law of Parliament. The Bill amends the Telegraph Act, 1885 and the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 .
Earlier, Congress floor leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury moved the statutory resolution opposing the introduction of the Bill and also said the promulgation of the Ordinance in March, 2019 was unwarranted. He said, ‘For every 10 Bills, you ( the Law Minister) are bringing four Ordinances.
Taking dig at the Law Minister for saying that earlier Aadhaar was ‘Niradhar’, the Congress member said, ‘Aap Aadhaar humsay Udhar liye hain (“You have borrowed the Aadhaar from us”).
He also said the Modi government is taking credit of the Aadhaar which was initially mooted by the UPA regime.
Biju Janata Dal member Pinaki Misra said the Data Protection Bill should be brought in if full support to the Aadhaar Bill is to be extended. There should be a robust statutory data protection measure, he said, adding that ‘information and data was the new oil of the society’.
Among others who spoke were Supriya Sule of NCP, Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal, P Raveendranath Kumar of AIADMK, P P Choudhary of the BJP and AIMIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi.
The Hyderabad Member said the government does not believe in the concept of ‘Jeeyo and Jeene do’.
Amendments made by opposition members were negated.
The Bill was passed with voice vote.
The House skipped lunch as the Aadhaar bill was taken up immediately after Zero Hour.
Sudan’s ruling generals and protest leaders reached an agreement on the disputed issue of a new governing body Friday, mediators said, in breakthrough talks aimed at ending the country’s months-long political crisis.
“The two sides agreed on establishing a sovereign council with a rotating military and civilian (presidency) for a period of three years or little more,” African Union mediator Mohamed El Hacen Lebatt told reporters.
The power sharing agreement came after two days of talks that resumed on Wednesday after the previous round of negotiations collapsed in May over who should lead the ruling body — a civilian or soldier.
Tension between the ruling generals and protest leaders had further soared after a brutal raid on a longstanding protest camp in the capital Khartoum that killed dozens of demonstrators and wounded hundreds on June 3.
Both sides also “agreed to have a detailed, transparent, national, independent investigation into all the regrettable violent incidents that the country faced in recent weeks,” including the June 3 raid, Lebatt said.
The ruling generals had previously rejected calls for an independent investigation from protest group The Alliance for Freedom and Change, and had launched their own enquiry.
The latest round of talks came through after intense mediation by Ethiopia and African Union between the two rival groups.