‘Talk to Taliban’ statement angers minister

Home affairs minister Guusje ter Horst has annoyed foreign minister Maxime Verhagen by again saying the west should talk to the Taliban, the fundamentalist Muslim movement in Afghanistan.


‘I still think we should talk to the Taliban, even more than I did then,’ the minister was quoted as saying in a Parool interview to be published on Saturday. A similar call by Ter Horst in 2007 was also criticised by the minister and MPs.
‘I’m not saying the Netherlands should conduct those talks. The west should,’ she told the paper. Not with hardcore terrorists, but with ‘people who are a little less fanatical’.
In a reaction, foreign minister Maxime Verhagen said Ter Horst should talk to the police unions about making the Netherlands a safer place.
‘She should mind her own business,’he was quoted by Nos tv as saying. ‘The west does not talk to the Taliban. That’s a job for the Afghan government.’

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