Running your lines with the Taliban

Remember the Irish diplo expelled from Afghanistan service for conducting unauthorized negotiations with the Taliban? He's back and trying to defend his useful idiocy because ... wait for it - dialogue works.

An Irish diplomat who was expelled from Afghanistan for talking to Taliban-linked insurgents defended his actions Saturday, insisting that dialogue could persuade militants to abandon violence.

"There is a critical difference between what is discreet and what is covert," Michael Semple, who was the second most senior European Union official in Afghanistan, told British newspaper in an interview.

"What we were doing was simply discreet because that was what was required. But it was totally in line with official policy to bring people in from the cold."

Semple was expelled late last year with Briton Mervyn Patterson, a UN political adviser, for threatening national security by contacting the Taliban in the volatile southern province of Helmand.
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