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Hekmatyar sets terms for talks

Withdraw foreign troops, says ex-Premier

KABUL: Afghanistan's former Prime Minister and dissident leader Gulbudin Hekmatyar has expressed his readiness for conditional talks with President Hamid Karzai's administration, a Kabul-based newspaper reported on Sunday.

``Hekmatyar is ready for talks if the Afghan Government sets a deadline for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan,'' the daily Outlook quoted Mr. Hekmatyar's spokesman Haroon Zarghoon as saying.

The former Premier, who has been leading his own radical Islamist party, the Hizb-e-Islami Afghanistan, and has been fighting the U.S.-led foreign forces is among the wanted men by Washington.

``Hekmatyar is an independent man and all know he lives in Afghanistan,'' his spokesman said.

ISAF and Afghan troops killed about 70 insurgents in Uruzgan province of southern Afghanistan on Saturday, a spokesman of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) told Xinhua on Sunday.

They were killed in a joint troop operation in Chora Valley, north of Tirin Kot, the provincial capital, Maj. Dominic White said.

The statement said about 100 to 150 militants attacked the troops who fought back with small arms fire and the support of attack helicopters.

One ISAF soldier was killed and eight others injured when their convoy was hit by a roadside bomb in Uruzgan on Saturday, another ISAF statement said. — Xinhua

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