Karzai negotiating with the Taliban? That's "naive", isn't it?

Leftdog is right. It's time to ask Harper exactly what the mission in Afghanistan is all about, particularly after this little announcement by Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai.

President Hamid Karzai acknowledged for the first time Friday he has met with Taliban militants in attempts to bring peace to Afghanistan, which is struggling to quell a rising insurgency. Karzai's assertion -- immediately rejected as false by a Taliban spokesman -- came as a suicide car bomber killed four people and wounded four others in Kabul, and militants overran a district in the volatile southeast.

Talk to the Taliban? Isn't that "emboldening the terrorists"? Karzai added this:

"Afghan Taliban are always welcome, they belong to this country. ... They are the sons of this soil," Karzai said. "As they repent, as they regret, as they want to come back to their own country, they are welcome."

That goes to the line US senator Bill Frist was spouting in October 2006. It is the line Jack Layton was taking at the same time and from which he eventually backed away. It is the line the Conservatives were all calling "naive", as though it was a suggestion that wasn't even possible.

Now, we're hearing it from Karzai himself and it raises another question. Was the Canadian government aware that Karzai is talking with the Taliban? If so, why the disingenuous stance suggesting negotiation is not possible? If not, why are Canadian troops being used to support a policy we are not aware of nor in agreement with?

And a question for Peter MacKay. Who's naive now, dimwit?