A $500 million buyout plan for peace with the Taliban in Afghanistan is being discussed at the Afghanistan Conference in London today. Observers are calling the plan the “Afghan Exit Strategy” or the “Afghan Exit Plan”.

On the opening day of the Afghanistan Conference, Saudi Arabia said it will only take part in the Afghanistan peace efforts if the Taliban denies sanctuary to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and cuts ties with militant networks.

The Saudi announcement comes as a London conference on the future of Afghanistan opened Thursday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai extending an olive branch to the Taliban and the British PM declaring it was a decisive moment.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the attendees of the conference his war-torn country is ready to reconcile with the Taliban. Karzai’s speech confirmed a significant change in strategy by the West to dissipate a nine-year conflict which has spread to Pakistan’s northern region also.

Saudi kingdom’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters on the sidelines of the conference in London, “Unless the Taliban give up the issue of sanctuary (to Osama bin Laden) I don’t think the negotiations with them will be possible or feasible to achieve anything,”

“We have two conditions that the request comes officially from Afghanistan and the Taliban has to prove its intentions incoming to the negotiations by cutting their relations with the terrorists and proving it,” he said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai in his opening speech today called on Saudi Arabia, which has hosted talks between Afghan government and Taliban representatives in the past, to help bring peace to Afghanistan.

Some 70 nations’ delegates are meeting at Lancaster House in central London to discuss a new Karzai-US-NATO buyout or “reintegration” of Taliban.

But the new strategy is doubted by several experts — though almost everyone admits it does introduce a new element to a status-quo situation.

America’s Afghanistan and Pakistan special envoy Richard Holbrooke has said the US will back plan to reintegrate Taliban.

Regional peace is at stake, say analysts.

Pakistan, Iran, India, Russia, China, and other neighboring countries are the real stakeholders in a permanent and durable peace plan for Afghanistan.

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