Plan to entice Taliban followers to defect is in final stages

The Afghan government will soon unveil a major new plan offering jobs, security, education and other social benefits to Taliban followers who defect, according to the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai.

The plan, in the final stages of preparation, will go beyond the government's previous offers to the Taliban, spokesman Waheed Omer said at a news conference Sunday in Kabul. "The mistakes we have committed before have been considered in developing this new plan," he said. "We have not done enough."

The reconciliation and reintegration plan is aimed at luring large numbers of the Taliban's followers, estimated by NATO officials at 25,000 to 30,000 active fighters, to change sides, and has qualified support from U.S. officials. So far, only about 170 Taliban members have defected, U.N. officials say,

Afghan officials are hoping to finance the plan through pledges from the international community to be made at a London conference on Afghanistan planned for Jan. 28. Some experts have put the cost of implementing it at $1 billion, mainly for jobs and education programs.

Even if such a plan wins international support, serious questions remain about Afghanistan's ability to carry it out, especially without a functioning national government, a prospect that remained distant on Sunday after parliament turned down more than half of Karzai's second list of nominees for Cabinet ministers on Saturday.

Chief among the new measures, Omer said, are strong security guarantees to defecting Taliban that they will be protected from arrest or retaliation. He did not detail what those measures would be, but many defecting Taliban in the past have asked to be integrated into local police forces.

Omer also indirectly confirmed that the government might ask that Taliban leader Mullah Omar be removed from the United Nations' terrorist blacklist.

It was the fourth death sentence against Ali Hassan al-Majid for crimes against humanity. Al-Majid's previous sentences have not been carried out partly because Halabja survivors wanted to have their case against him heard.

Relatives of Halabja's victims clapped and embraced in a screened-off corner of the courtroom after the verdict.

A suspected U.S. drone fired on a house in Pakistan's tribal region Sunday, killing 20 people in the 11th such attack since militants in the area orchestrated a deadly suicide bombing against a CIA base in Afghanistan, intelligence officials said.

Missiles slammed into the house in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan, near the site of a drone strike Thursday that targeted a meeting of militant commanders in an apparently unsuccessful attempt to kill Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud.

The house targeted in Sunday's attack was being used by Usman Jan, the head of the Al-Qaida-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, intelligence officials said. It was unclear whether Jan was killed.