ISLAMABAD: Pakistan and Afghanistan are in talks on the release of a key member of the Taliban, whose 2010 arrest in Pakistan was blamed for sabotaging peace initiatives, a Pakistani foreign ministry official confirmed yesterday.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a powerful Taliban military chief who has been described as the militia’s second in command, was arrested in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi.

The Afghan government and the former UN envoy to Afghanistan said his detention had adversely affected efforts to talk to the insurgents.

“The issue of prisoners is under discussion between the two countries,” foreign ministry spokesman Moazzam Ahmad Khan told reporters when asked to comment on Afghan demands for access to Baradar and for his release.

The spokesman did not name any prisoner or give further details, but when asked, confirmed that Baradar was still in Pakistani custody.

Baradar is the most important Taliban leader to be captured since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Afghan militia from power in Kabul.

He was known as a trusted aide to the Taliban’s elusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Shortly after Baradar’s arrest, the Pentagon said two other Taliban officials were arrested, also understood to have been captured in Pakistan.

In March 2010, Kai Eide, the then just retired UN envoy to Afghanistan, said the arrest of key Taliban in Pakistan had stopped a secret channel of communication between the insurgents and the United Nations.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly invited the Taliban to open direct talks with his government and on Pakistan to facilitate an end to the 10-year war.

Pakistan has said it will do anything required by Kabul to support an Afghan-led peace process, but there is a wide degree of scepticism in Afghanistan and the United States about the sincerity of the former Taliban ally.

On Thursday, Taliban leaders said they will hold a meeting to decide whether a Pakistani cricket star-turned-politician will be allowed to hold a planned march to their tribal stronghold to protest US drone strikes, the militant group’s spokesman said.

Ahsanullah Ahsan said the Pakistani Taliban consider Imran Khan to be an “infidel” since he has described himself as a liberal - a term they associate with a lack of religious belief. But the spokesman denied a threat reported earlier by The Associated Press that the group would kill Khan if he holds the demonstration he has planned for September.

The Pakistani Taliban leadership council “will decide what to do a week before his arrival and will announce it,” Ahsan told the AP by email. “It’s sure and clear that we don’t have any sympathy with Imran Khan, neither do we need his sympathy, as he himself claims to be a liberal, and we see liberals as infidels.”

The AP reported Wednesday that the Taliban would target Khan with suicide bombers if he held his march, following an interview with Ahsan in a remote area of their militant stronghold of South Waziristan.

Khan has described himself as a liberal in various TV interviews, but he has also made clear that he is a practicing Muslim - a distinction the Taliban seemed to ignore.

The 59-year-old Khan is perhaps the most famous person in Pakistan because he led the country’s cricket team to victory in the 1992 World Cup. He was once known for his playboy lifestyle and marriage to British socialite Jemima Khan, but they divorced several years ago, and he has since become much more conservative and religious.

Khan founded the Pakistan Movement for Justice party about 15 years ago, but has only gained political momentum over the last year, riding a wave of opposition to drone strikes, the government’s alliance with the U.S. and political corruption.

His detractors have criticized him for not being tough enough on the Pakistani Taliban, and have even nicknamed him “Taliban Khan” because of his views and his cozy ties with conservative Islamists who could help him attract right-wing voters in national elections likely to be held later this year or early next year.

As part of his political campaign, Khan has said he is planning to lead thousands of people in a march to Waziristan in September to demonstrate against U.S. drone strikes.

– AFP & AP