NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and 28 members of the NATO council today made an unannounced visit to Kabul to underscore the military alliance's commitment to supporting Afghanistan after its fighting forces complete their withdrawal in 2014.

"Our visit today is a clear demonstration of our commitment," Rasmussen said at a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai that was held to detail NATO plans to maintain a "non-combat" role beyond 2014. "All fifty nations that are part of our coalition remain committed to Afghanistan, now and for the long term."

The high profile tour comes just weeks after the U.N. Security Council cancelled an Afghanistan visit -- planned for next week -- because it was considered too dangerous.

The risk to foreign powers in Afghanistan is undeniable. On Wednesday, a suicide bombed rammed a truck filled with explosives into a joint NATO-Afghan army outpost in eastern Afghanistan, injuring at least 10 Afghan and coalition troops, according to an Associated Press report. And allied forces have come under increasing attack from troops within the Afghan security agencies.

But today's visit raised the question: Why is it safe enough for NATO ambassadors, including U.S. Ambassador Ivo Daalder, to travel there and not for the U.N. Security Council, which planned to travel with a far smaller delegation with nearly half the number of senior ambassadors?

Earlier this month, I reported that the U.N. Security Council had indefinitely postponed its plans to pay a visit to Afghanistan over October 21-25, as well as a side trip to Yemen.

The decision followed an October 2 closed-door briefing to the U.N. Security Council by Gregory Starr -- a former U.S. State Department security chief who currently oversees security matters for the Unite d Nations -- who claimed he had received specific threats, but that maybe the trip could be rescheduled for mid November.

The briefing caught U.N. envoys by surprise, as Starr had informed them just the day before that the trip to Afghanistan was "doable." The U.N. Special Representative Jan Kubis, meanwhile, is said to have agreed, and had hoped the council's visit would underscore the international community's commitment to Afghanistan after the withdrawal of NATO combat forces.

"He said there was new intelligence that wasn't available the day before," according to a U.N.-based diplomat.

The cancellation of the visit, which was being organized by Germany, has infuriated some delegations, particularly Berlin, which privately complained that the Security Council was squandering an opportunity to underscore U.N. support for the mission, according to council diplomats. Diplomats said that the United States, which had expressed concern about security conditions, was behind the decision to postpone the trip, at least until November.

"These are crucial times for Afghanistan: not only are preparations for transition in full swing -- but there are also elections coming up. Both need a strong and active UN presence on the ground with the full backing of the U.N. Security Council," said a U.N. based diplomat. "So if NATO can send this much-needed message, why not the U.N.?

"The very fact that the secretary general of NATO and 28 ambassadors of NATO countries deemed security sufficient for their mission sends an important message of confidence in the Afghani people," the diplomat said.

The United States declined to comment on the dispute.

But a Security Council diplomat defended the decision to postpone the trip, saying that while the U.S. and other council members were prepared to go to Afghanistan, there had been broad agreement in the council to put off the trip following Starr's security warning. "It's unfortunate that some members [of the Security Council] have misrepresented the facts given the broad consensus in the council to postpone the trip," the diplomat said.

This morning, the United Nations defended its decision to hold off the trip. "All we really have to say about it is that we made a recommendation based on the best information available," said Farhan Haq, the spokesman for the United Nations secretary general. "We stand by that recommendation, but will not comment further."

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The U.N. Security Council has killed plans for a high-level visit to Afghanistan later this month amid concerns that conditions are too dangerous, according to Security Council diplomats familiar with the planned trip.

Germany -- which oversees Afghanistan issues in the Security Council -- had proposed leading a U.N. Security Council delegation to the country from October 20-24. But the U.N. warned that the trip -- which included a side stop in Yemen -- would run risks.

The decision to put off the trip followed a closed door Security Council briefing this afternoon by the U.N.'s top security official -- U.N. Undersecretary General Gregory Starr, who was updating the 15-nation council on security for the U.N.'s far flung missions.

Starr -- a former security chief for the U.S. State Department -- said it would be better to postpone the visit. But some diplomats said a visit would be unlikely later because the onset of winter would make travel far more difficult.

At the request of Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations -- who also favored postponing the trip -- attendance at today's meeting was restricted to the top Security Council ambassadors.

One council diplomat said that the official reason for the trip's cancellation is that no dates had ever been set and the consensus was that it would be better to postpone until the new year. But the "obvious reason," the official said, "is that you don't want to go to these dangerous places when there are threats."

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The U.N. Security Council on Friday will impose sanctions on the Pakistani Taliban, an extremist Islamic organization that American officials blame for masterminding the botched May 2010 Times Square bombing plot.

The group, which is formally named Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), will be added Friday to a U.N. blacklist of terrorist organizations linked to al Qaeda. It was already placed on the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organization list last September, some four months after the United States accused the group of attempting to set off a car bomb in the packed New York City tourism center.

The United States proposed in recent weeks that the organization be added to the U.N. list, citing the widening reach of the organization's terrorism targets. Australia, Canada, Britain, France, and Pakistan co-sponsored the U.S. measure. Tomorrow's action reflects that the United States has now secured unanimous support from the 15-nation council, including from China and Russia, for imposing U.N. sanctions on the group.

The Obama administration claims that Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen who planted the Times Square car bomb, acknowledged that he was trained in Waziristan, a stronghold for al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban.

The Pakistani Taliban, a relatively new militant group that was formally established in 2007 and is headed by Hakimullah Mehsud, who has engaged in increasingly audacious terrorist attacks against Pakistani and U.S. targets. The group launched a December 2009 attack against a U.S. military base in Afghanistan and carried out the April 2010 bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan.

The decision to target the Pakistani Taliban comes at a time when the United Nations is seeking to encourage the Afghan Taliban to pursue peace talks with the Afghan government, a necessary prelude to a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.N. anti-terrorism blacklist -- known officially as the 1267 list, a reference to the U.N. Security Council resolution that established the measures -- imposes a set of financial and travel bans that are aimed at restraining extremist capacity to strike.

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In July, Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister and U.N. trouble-shooter in Afghanistan and Iraq, returned for the first time in several years to Kabul, where nearly a decade earlier he had helped establish a government after the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban.

This time, Brahimi was part of a private, high-level delegation, which included Thomas Pickering, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Jean-Marie Guehenno, the French former chief of the U.N. peacekeeping department, that is preparing a weighty study for the Century Foundation on the end-game to the current conflict in Afghanistan. They also visited other key countries, including India and Pakistan.

Brahimi's return to the scene comes as the United States, Afghanistan and some factions of the Taliban have discussed commencing talks that might eventually strike a peace deal. The timing has fueled speculation that Brahimi, who lives in Paris, might be pulled from retirement to again become a U.N. envoy to Afghanistan to help mediate a political settlement between Karzai's government and the Taliban, a pact that would set the stage for a U.S. military withdrawal from the country.

One U.N.-based official said that Brahimi had been approached by the Americans and asked whether he might consider a U.N. role in Afghanistan. He responded that he would only entertain the prospect of a mediation role if he was confident he had the full backing of the U.S. government -- something he apparently doesn't have, the official said.

In fact, U.S officials have never really stopped seeking Brahimi's counsel on Afghanistan. Bob Woodward, in his book Obama's Wars, wrote that top U.S. officials were mulling the possible need for a prominent foreigner -- a "philosopher king," in Woodward's words -- to help mediate a political deal. "One possible candidate was Lakhdar Brahimi, the elderly United Nations diplomat who had helped engineer Karzai's rise to power after the U.S. invasion in 2001," Woodward wrote. "Could he deliver this? Brahimi was 76, perhaps too old for the monumental diplomatic mission."

But some seemed to take the prospect very seriously. Staffan di Mistura, the Italian-Swedish diplomat who currently heads up the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, traveled to New York during the U.N. General Assembly debate in September to kill off any idea of appointing an independent envoy to Afghanistan to lead the U.N. mediation efforts, according to three sources familiar with the visit.

Di Mistura said that he didn't oppose the appointment of a U.N. mediator, the three sources said, but he wanted it to be someone who served under his own instructions.

"Staffan is naturally concerned about a unified line of command as long as he is SRSG [the Secretary General's special representative]," according to a U.N. official. He also raised concerns that the Taliban would not accept Brahimi as an interlocutor, according to one of the U.N.-based sources.

Sources close to Brahimi said that the aging diplomat has no ambitions to return to Afghanistan, but that he might serve if he felt his services were needed, and he felt confident about the prospects of a deal. They said that his work on behalf of the Century Foundation is not aimed at positioning him to play a role in Afghanistan.

For the time being, Di Mistura seems to have prevailed -- in part because Richard C. Holbrooke, President Obama's envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, who has worked closely with Di Mistura in both Iraq and Afghanistan, are not keen on relinquishing control of political talks to Brahimi, according to U.N. officials.  

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The U.N. Security Council has removed five former Taliban members, including two dead men and the Islamic movement's former ambassadors to Pakistan and the United Nations, from a U.N. terrorist blacklist, a move aimed at signaling to Taliban insurgents that they will be rewarded for putting down their weapons.

The action represents a modest diplomatic achievement for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has pressed the international community to lift sanctions on 137 members of the former Taliban government in an effort to prod the insurgents into peace talks with the government. It also reflects willingness by Russia, which opposes any role for the Taliban in a future government, to lift travel and financial sanctions on former Taliban leaders who have put down their arms.

It was more than a decade ago that the U.N. Security Council first imposed sanctions on members of the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time, for refusing to surrender Osama bin Laden to U.S. authorities in connection with al Qaeda's role in the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. In January 2001, more than 100 Taliban leaders were added to the list. The list was expanded after the September 11, 2001, attacks, to include al Qaeda members and their supporters. The measures include a travel ban, an arms embargo, and a prohibition on the direct or indirect provision of funds or economic resources.

The move follows a major U.N. review of the sanctions list, which after today's action includes 489 individuals and entities, including 257 al Qaeda members and backers.  It also comes weeks after Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, traveled to New York to meet with diplomats from Russia and Austria, which oversees the Security Council committee responsible for delisting Taliban members. Holbrooke urged them to make progress on the delisting process in order to help boost peace prospects in Afghanistan.

The Security Council lifted an asset freeze and travel ban on Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang, who served as the Taliban's ambassador before the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and Abdul Salam Zaeef, the public voice of the Taliban in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion. Zaeef, who was serving as the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, was handed over to American authorities and transferred to Guantánamo Bay detention facility, where he stayed until 2005.

In his memoir, My Life with the Taliban, Zaeef, a 42-year-old founding member of the Taliban, recounts a life of militancy dating back to the Soviet resistance in 1980s. He claims that he was sold by Pakistani intelligence officials to U.S. operatives in 2002. He was released in 2005 without being charged with a crime. He has since lived in Kabul under government protection.

Mujahid Muhammad Awrang , the Taliban's former U.N. representative, served as the movement's main contact with the United States and other western governments. Operating out of an office in Queens, Mujahid met frequently with the Clinton administration's under secretary of state for South Asian affairs, Rick Inderfurth.

Three remaining former Taliban taken off the list include Abdul Satar Paktin, and two dead men, Abdul Samad Khaksar and Muhammad Islam Mohammadi. The presence of dead people on the list has long been a source of embarrassment to the council. In December, the council passed a resolution that encourages states to report on the newly dead and encourages the U.N. committee responsible for overseeing the sanctions "to remove listings of deceased individuals where credible information regarding death is available."

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Richard C. Holbrooke, the White House's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, will travel to New York on Tuesday to help Afghanistan negotiate the removal of select Taliban members from a U.N. anti-terror blacklist, according to senior U.N.-based officials.

Holbrooke's decision to visit New York comes weeks after Afghan President Hamid Karzai appealed to the U.N. Security Council to drop Taliban from a list of individuals targeted with travel and financial sanctions, a first step in an effort to convince Taliban militants to end their insurgency and strike a peace deal with the government. The Afghan government's June 6 "peace jirga" on June 6 called for taking steps towards reconciliation with the Taliban, including the removal of former Taliban officials from the U.N. blacklist.

The Security Council is now reviewing the status of 15 former Taliban members on the watch list, including a former Taliban education minister, Mullah Arsala Rahmani, who is currently serving in the Afghan senate. According to council diplomats, President Karzai is expected to present the council's sanctions committee with a letter arguing that the 15 former Taliban have renounced terrorism and are no longer involved in the violent overthrow of his government.

The Afghan effort has been stalled by Russia, which has maintained that Karzai's government has provided insufficient evidence to remove the Afghans from the list.  Russia made it clear that it takes a very hard line on the removal from the blacklist of Taliban who are still engaged in terrorist or military activities. On March 22, Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, told the council "that dialogue is possible only with those who have laid down arms, recognized the government and constitution of Afghanistan, and broken their links with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups."

But U.S. and Afghan officials hope that Russia, which agreed to delist a smaller group of five former Taliban officials in January, will be willing to at least let a limited number off the list, sending a signal to other Taliban fighters that it is possible to achieve relief from the U.N. measures. Council diplomats say the names under consideration do not include the Taliban's leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, or other combatants currently participating in the insurgency.

In advance of the talks, the United States made an important concession to Moscow. Last month, the State Department designated a Chechen separatist commander, Doku Umarov, a terrorist. Umarov and his followers have claimed responsibility for a number of violent actions, including a suicide bombing in Moscow's subway system. The decision, which was announced on the eve of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's White House summit with President Barack Obama, marked a shift in standard U.S. protocol. The U.S. usually places an individual on the U.S. terror list before pressing for his or her inclusion on the U.N. blacklist, but in this instance that was not the case. But U.N.-based officials said it was unclear whether the United States received assurances that Russia would respond by yielding ground on the Taliban sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council first imposed sanctions on the Taliban government in October 1999 for harboring Osama bin Laden, and refusing to surrender him to U.S. authorities for his alleged role in masterminding the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. More than 100 Taliban leaders were added to the list in January 2001.

After the September 11 terror attacks, the United States ushered through resolutions that added al Qaeda members and their supporters to the sanctions list. The measures included a travel ban, an arms embargo, and a prohibition on the direct or indirect provision of funds or economic resources. To authorize the removal of someone from the list, the resolution requires evidence that Taliban members have renounced violence, expressed support for the Afghan government and its constitution, and severed their links to al Qaeda. But efforts to reward individuals who break ranks with the Taliban and rally behind Karzai's government have run up against resistance from Russia.

"The Russian position is perfectly reasonable," said Richard Barrett, who oversees a committee responsible for monitoring implementation of the sanctions against the Taliban and al Qaeda. "People should not come off the list just because there is a political process. Mullah Omar and others aren't prevented from participating in the political process even though they are on the list."

But Afghanistan has increased pressure on Russia and other council members to reverse course, arguing that the sanctions list is an impediment to prospects for a peace settlement with the Taliban. Karzai met with a visiting delegation of Security Council members last month and appealed to them to remove names from the list. Some officials indicated that Karzai and his advisors had requested that the entire list of 137 Taliban be eliminated. But others challenged that account, saying that Karzai only asked that some Taliban officials be delisted.

In January, Russian government lifted its objection to delisting Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil, a minister of foreign affairs in the former Taliban government, and Abdul Hakim Monib Muhammad Nazar, another former Taliban official who broke ranks with the movement and served as Karzai's governor in Uruzgan. Russia has also agreed to delist Fazl Muhammad Faizan Qamaruddin, Shams-us-Safa Aminzai, and Muhammad Musa Hotak Abdul Mehdi.

The Afghan leader is seeking to make progress on reconciling with the Taliban in advance of a major international conference in Kabul on July 20 aimed at supporting the stability of Afghanistan. Among the strongest advocates are Afghan politicians, like Mullah Rahmani, who stand to benefit directly from the delisting. Rahmani claims to have links to the Taliban and to have established indirect communications to Mullah Omar.

"The blacklist will be a start," he told the New York Times. "It is symbolically very important. Even if they only move 60 or 70 names, that would be enough. The next stop could be talks between government and Taliban representatives in some neutral country."

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The United Nations announced today that Afghan security forces may have killed a U.N. employee, Louis Maxwell, following an assault by heavily-armed insurgents on a U.N. guesthouse in October.

A preliminary internal investigation "raised the disturbing possibility" that Maxwell, a U.S. national, "may have died to due to "friendly fire" from Afghan security forces," U.N. chief spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters today. Nesirky said a high level U.N. board of inquiry is expected to conclude its investigation into the case in the coming days.

The announcement followed the publication of an account of Maxwell's death in the German magazine Stern. The magazine also broadcast a video, which it claimed was provided by the United Nations, purportedly showing Maxwell being shot by Afghan security forces. 

Insurgents armed with automatic weapons, grenades and suicide vests launched an Oct. 28 attack on a private guesthouse where U.N. personnel were staying. The incident marked the most deadly attack yet against U.N. civilians in Afghanistan and forced the United Nations to evacuate hundreds of international staffers from the country. Five staffers "were tragically killed" in the incident, Nesirky said.

After the attack, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan conducted a preliminary probe into the attack, They uncovered evidence suggesting that Maxwell, a security official, escaped the residence only to be killed by Afghan forces responding to the attack, according to U.N. officials. Afghan authorities initially claimed that Maxwell had been killed by insurgents, possibly from an exploded suicide vest.

"His last words over the walkie-talkie he was holding were, `I am shot,'" Michele Montas, the former U.N. spokesman, told the Miami Herald after the incident. "Then there was an explosion as one of the suicide bombers apparently detonated the explosives he was carrying."

Secretary General Ban Ki moon praised Maxwell and another U.N. security guard, Laurance Mefful of Ghana, for holding off the attackers for about an hour. "They fought through the corridors of the building and from the rooftop," Ban told U.N. delegates ad the U.N. General Assembly. "They held off the attackers long enough for their colleagues to escape, armed only with pistols against assailants carrying automatic weapons and grenades and wearing suicide vests."

Following a preliminary inquiry, the United Nations called for additional investigative support from headquarters, establishing the board of inquiry in January. "Once the board of inquiry is finalized, we will share our findings with the Government of Afghanistan and if warranted we will ask for a thorough investigation surrounding the death of this U.N. employee and the circumstances of the deaths of the other U.N. employees," Nesirky said.

In addition, Nesirky said the United Nations is also cooperating with a separate investigation into the Afghan governments possible involvement in the killing by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "The United Nations has briefed the Maxwell family on the progress of its initial inquiries and is determined to support the family."

United Nations staff that left Afghanistan because of worsening security are set to begin returning to Kabul by March 8, according to an internal U.N. memo obtained by Matthew Lee, the U.N. blogger at Inner City Press.

The U.N. evacuated several hundred staff out the country following an Oct. 28 Taliban attack on the Bakhtar Guest House, which housed U.N. staff. Five U.N. workers were killed in the attack, the worst in the U.N.'s history in Afghanistan, triggering a major review of U.N. security policy.

The memo says that 30 secure new housing units will be ready by the end of the month, and that an additional 50 will be prepared by April. The memo also states that the U.N. mission in Afghanistan is struggling to overcome a crisis of morale following the country's controversial elections and a slew of staff defections.

"At the beginning of the year with the 2010 budget coming into effect, UNAMA had a vacancy rate of 44%," the memo stated. "The situation had reached a point where the SRSG felt obliged to alert the Security Council that if the staffing back log were to continue, UNAMA would not be able to implement key elements of its mandate."

Most of the new housing will be situated in the main U.N. compound some 20 minutes from the center of Kabul. Although the new arrangement is designed to enhance security, the memo acknowledged that housing so many U.N. officials outside the center of Kabul would increase the risk of attack during their commute to town.

The Russian government has agreed to permit the removal of the names of five former Taliban officials from a U.N. list of suspected terrorists, sending a clear signal that it wants to back U.N. and Afghan efforts to pursue peace talks with the Taliban, according to Security Council diplomats.

The move marked a dramatic shift for the Russian government, which has opposed previous efforts by the U.S. and European governments to delist former Taliban who have renounced violence and backed the government of President Hamid Karzai.

On Monday, a Russian spokesman at the U.N. mission told Turtle Bay, "[W]e can say we are against the delisting of the Taliban." The spokesman, Ruslan Bakhtin, later said he didn't realize that his government had moved to delist former Taliban.

The Russian government has lifted its objection to delisting Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkil, a minister of foreign affairs in the former Taliban government, and Abdul Hakim Monib Muhammad Nazar, another former Taliban official who broke ranks with the movement and served as Karzai's governor in Uruzgan. Russia has also agreed to delist Fazl Muhammad Faizan Qamaruddin, Shams-us-Safa Aminzai, and Muhammad Musa Hotak Abdul Mehdi.

A council diplomat told Turtle Bay that U.N. procedure allows for the five former Taliban leaders' names to be immediately lifted from the list, a move Russia's acquiescence makes more likely. [UPDATE: A U.N. Security Council sanctions committee announced Tuesday that it has lifted sanctions against the five former Taliban officials, bolstering Afghan and U.N. efforts to pursue peace talks with the Taliban, Security Council diplomats said.]

"The Russians aren't dead set against delisting Taliban. They are dead set against doing so without good reason," said Richard Barrett, a senior U.N. counterterrorism official who oversees a panel responsible for enforcing sanctions against al Qaeda and the Taliban. "They do not want the Taliban to emerge from purdah without clear assurances that they have changed."

"Russia wants a stable Afghanistan to contain the spread of extremism and political unrest in Central Asia," Barrett said. "It also wants to curb its growing domestic drug problem, which requires effective government in the south."

A Russian official told Turtle Bay today that his government will not remove Taliban militants from a U.N. list of individuals once suspected of engaging in terrorist activities, thwarting U.S. and U.N. aims to entice so-called moderate Taliban to make peace or switch sides in the Afghan war and support the Western-backed government of Hamid Karzai.

"Our position hasn't changed and we can say we are against the delisting of the Taliban," Ruslan Bakhtin, a spokesman for the Russian mission to the United Nations, said in a interview. "It continues to be a terrorist organization and it continues to carry out terrorist activities on Afghan soil." [UPDATE: Russia is now moving to delist five former Taliban officials.]

Afghanistan and the United Nations have been appealing to the U.N. Security Council in recent weeks to lift sanctions on a handful of Taliban officials who are committed to renouncing violence. The move, which is backed by the United States, is viewed by Kai Eide, the U.N.'s top envoy in Afghanistan, as a critical first step toward opening the door to political talks with the Taliban.

Earlier this month, Afghanistan's U.N. ambassador Zahir Tanin called directly on the 15-nation U.N. Security Council to delist Taliban combatants who are "willing to renounce violence and join the peace process."

For years, Moscow has opposed U.S. and European attempts to reward NATO-friendly former Taliban militants by easing sanctions on them. In 2007, Russian blocked an effort by the United States and the Dutch to delist Karzai's governor of Uruzgan, Abdul Hakim Monib, a former deputy minister of frontier affairs in the prior Taliban government who was said to be a critical asset in the U.S.- led war on terror.

As I reported at the time:

The U.N. Security Council first imposed sanctions on the Taliban in October 1999 for providing a safe haven to Osama bin Laden and for refusing to surrender him to face trial in New York for masterminding the August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa. Monib and more than 100 other Taliban leaders were placed on a sanctions list in January 2001, a year before he broke ranks with the Islamic movement and joined forces with Hamid Karzai, the Washington-backed president of Afghanistan.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the United States ushered through resolutions that expanded the list of sanctioned people to suspected al-Qaeda members. The measures included a travel ban, an arms embargo and a prohibition on the direct or indirect provision of funds or economic resources to Monib and 489 other people and groups.

But the Security Council has been slow to adjust to the changing political realities in Afghanistan, where at least 19 former Taliban officials have reconciled with Karzai's government. It also cannot agree to remove other people from the list, even after they have died or have convinced the United States that they should not be considered enemies.

Afghan experts said that they were puzzled by Russia's position, saying that Moscow has been generally helpful to NATO by allowing overflight access over their territory. "I don't think it has to do with sticking it to us," said J. Alexander Thier, an expert on Afghanistan at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He said it may reflect Russia's traditional support for the Taliban's greatest Afghan rival, the Northern Alliance. But he said that "would be pure speculation."