Islamabad, May 3: After hitting an impasse over blockades of trade routes, peace talks between warring Afghan factions broke down today. ``They have been suspended indefinitely,'' said James Ngobe, the United Nations representative at the troubled talks. After barely two hours, the northern-based opposition walked out of the talks when the Taliban's lone representative refused to negotiate the lifting of road blockades and prisoner exchanges.Instead Hakim Mujahed, the Taliban negotiator, repeated the Taliban's earlier demand that a Governing Commission of religious scholars be established quickly to open trade routes and arrange prisoner exchanges.The breakthrough agreement to form the Commission was brokered last Wednesday. It wasn't immediately clear whether the establishment of the Commission was in jeopardy as a result of the breakdown in talks. The Governing Commission is considered by many to be Afghanistan's best chance at peace in two decades.When talks opened earlier today after a two-dayrecess only one of the original five Taliban negotiators was at the table. The Taliban religious Army sent only its Ambassador to Pakistan Mujahed to Islamabad, where talks were being sponsored by the UN and the Organisation of Islamic Conference.``I have the full authority to negotiate,'' said Mujahed as he arrived at the Punjab House to represent the Army's reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.The opposition called on the UN to force the Taliban to open roads particularly to food-strapped areas of central Afghanistan. ``The UN should put pressure on the Taliban to lift the roadblocks,'' said a spokesman for ousted military chief Ahmed Shah Masood, known as Abdullah.Contacted by satellite telephone in Afghanistan's rugged Panjshir Valley, Abdullah accused the Taliban of violating an earlier agreement to put everything on the negotiation table including opening trade routes throughout the war-ravaged country.Earlier today, a spokesman for the anti-Taliban alliance, Rasul Talib, said theOpposition wants the Taliban to lift a blockade of central Afghanistan, where the United Nations says at least 100 people have died of starvation and tens of thousands more are in danger of dying. The Taliban say a northern route controlled by the anti-Taliban alliance cannot be used because marauding bands of thieves routinely attack vehicles travelling that road.As both sides left the site of the talks, each accused the other of seeking a military, rather than a negotiated settlement.
