An Afghan rebel group allied with the Taliban has rejected a government offer of reconciliation, saying there could be no peace while foreign forces remained in the country. The group, led by former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said an offer of reconciliation by President Hamid Karzai was an attempt to trick the Afghan people. "There can be no peace and reconciliation in the presence of foreign forces," Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami party said in a statement distributed to media in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar late on Wednesday and carried today by Reuters. Hekmatyar, a prominent leader of Afghan guerrillas who battled occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s, became prime minister briefly in the 1990s, after Soviet forces withdrew. U.S.-backed Karzai reiterated a call for reconciliation with insurgent groups last month, calling on fighters to lay down their arms and rejoin society.
