Kabul: Pakistan's recent arrests of top Taliban leaders have halted the United Nation's secret talks with the insurgency, the UN's former envoy to Afghanistan said.
Kai Eide, a Norwegian diplomat who just stepped down from the UN post in the Afghan capital of Kabul, told the BBC that discussions with senior Taliban members began a year ago and included face-to-face conversations in Dubai and elsewhere.
It was the first time that Eide publicly confirmed that his contacts with senior Taliban members had begun a year ago.
"The first contact was probably last spring, then of course you moved into the (Afghan presidential) election process where there was a lull in activity," Eide told the BBC in a report issued on Friday.
"Then, communication picked up when the election process was over, and it continued to pick up until a certain moment a few weeks ago."
Pakistan has denied that it moved against the Taliban to stop or exert control of any talks that could determine the future of neighboring Afghanistan.
Eide, who was interviewed at his home outside the Norwegian capital of Oslo, said there were many channels of communication with the Taliban, including those involving senior representatives of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
