Afghan leaders accuse British of secret plan for training Taleban

SECRET British plans for a Taleban training camp in southern Afghanistan are behind a spectacular diplomatic spat that has seen Anglo-Afghan relations plummet to an almost unprecedented low.

Afghan officials claim the camp for 2,000 fighters was part of a top-secret deal to make the insurgents swap sides.

The plans were discovered on a computer memory stick seized by Afghan secret police in December.

The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taleban without the president's permission.

The British insist president Hamid Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai expelled two top diplomats, linked to the plan, amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of disagreements. Since then Mr Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to a top UN job in Kabul and has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand province.

Last week the president's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence on a student journalist, Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, for blasphemy, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on trumped up weapons charges. Experts see it as deliberate "two fingers" to the British.

An Afghan government whistleblower said the training camp was part of a controversial British plan to use bands of reconciled Taleban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents.

He said: "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taleban fighters and 200 low level commanders."

The thumb-sized computer chip was impounded by Afghanistan's national directorate of security, when they moved against a party of international diplomats visiting Helmand, on 23 December, last year.

A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested the British said the ministry of interior and the national security council knew about it, but no- one knew anything. That's why the president was so angry."

UK diplomats, the UN, western officials and senior Afghan mandarins have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. The president's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".

The memory stick information revealed 64,000 had been spent preparing the camp and a further 102,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taleban.

Government staff also claimed the "EU peace-builders" had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. Officially, the British have remained tight-lipped. A spokesman said: "The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add."