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Pakistan May Release Taliban Commander to Aid Afghan Peace Talks

LONDON — Pakistan is ready to release Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, an imprisoned senior Taliban commander, in a bid to bolster the faltering peace process in Afghanistan, officials in Islamabad said Tuesday.

The release of Mr. Baradar, a former deputy leader of the Taliban who was captured with C.I.A. help in 2010, would meet longstanding demands from American and Afghan officials, who hope he can help draw other Taliban commanders into peace talks.

Even as Pakistani officials released several waves of Taliban prisoners over the past year, including a new group of seven on Sunday, they resisted setting Mr. Baradar free. And on Tuesday, it was unclear exactly when Mr. Baradar was to be released, and what had led to the government’s shift.

Aimal Faizi, the spokesman for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, said Afghan officials had been talking closely with Pakistan in recent weeks about Mr. Baradar’s release. “We welcome Pakistan’s decision to release Mullah Baradar,” Mr. Faizi said, “and his release will certainly help the Afghan peace process.”

But other Afghan officials expressed wariness about the announcement, saying similar promises in the past had not borne out.

“Let’s wait a couple more days and see what exactly happens,” said Masoom Stanekzai, the head of the Afghan government’s High Peace Council.

Even if the Pakistanis make good on their promise, other difficult questions surround Mr. Baradar, whose fate has become a weather vane of diplomatic relations and intelligence chicanery among the United States, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Some critics wonder whether Mr. Baradar’s release would signify an act of genuine good will on the part of Pakistan, or rather a more cynical attempt to shape the power dispensation in Afghanistan before American combat troops leave by the end of next year.

“This shows blatant intervention of Pakistan in Afghanistan’s internal affairs, which is mainly the result of weak diplomacy by the Afghan government,” said Sayed Agha Fazel Hussain Sancharaki, the spokesman for the National Coalition of Afghanistan political bloc.

Even if Mr. Baradar were to become an ambassador for the nascent Afghan peace process, it is unclear how much traction he maintains among his own fighters after years in Pakistani custody.

All of that also presumes that Mr. Baradar is ready to give up the fight. Of the 33 Afghan Taliban prisoners who have been set free by Pakistan this year, several are thought to have returned directly to the battlefield.

Wahid Muzhda, a security analyst in Kabul who worked in the Foreign Ministry under the Taliban government, was skeptical of the value of a release of Mr. Baradar, if it does occur. “It’s not welcomed by the Taliban,” he said. “They do not trust anyone brought by Pakistan as Taliban representatives.”

Rustam Shah Mohmand, a former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul, said that Taliban policy was to expel members who had been captured. “They believe that a detainee may speak the language of the captor and may have been brainwashed or trapped in different ways,” he said. “That is why they don’t accept him back into the movement.”

Tuesday’s announcement in Islamabad was made by Sartaj Aziz, the government’s senior adviser on national security and foreign affairs. In an interview with Reuters, Mr. Aziz said Mr. Baradar could be released as early as this month.

But in later comments, Mr. Aziz said no date had been set. And a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in an interview that Mr. Baradar would be released “at an appropriate time.”

The shift by Pakistan came two weeks after Mr. Karzai visited Islamabad for talks with the Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. During the meeting, Mr. Karzai repeated longstanding demands for Mr. Baradar’s release.

On Tuesday, Pakistani officials said that despite the stated wishes of the Kabul government, Mr. Baradar would not be released directly into Afghan custody but would most likely be set free inside Pakistan.

That would seem to play into Afghan fears that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, the I.S.I., is attempting to insert itself into the peace process to influence the course of Afghan power.

But Mr. Faizi, the Afghan presidential spokesman, expressed a cautious acceptance that Mr. Baradar might be kept in Pakistan. “That’s O.K., provided we are sure he is accessible, we have an address for him, and he’s secure and protected,” Mr. Faizi said.

Previous Afghan Taliban prisoners have been set free in Baluchistan, the western Pakistani province where the insurgents enjoy sanctuary in rural villages along the border, which they use to rest and plan attacks inside Afghanistan.

The exact circumstances of the raid in which Mr. Baradar was arrested, in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, remain confused. American and Pakistani officials initially said they had not been targeting Mr. Baradar when they carried out the raid. They realized his identity only after several days of questioning.

But other accounts, some tied to Pakistani officials, suggested that the Pakistanis had deliberately picked up Mr. Baradar to control the tempo of nascent efforts to draw the Afghan Taliban into negotiations.

Since then Mr. Baradar has been held by Pakistani intelligence agents at safe houses around the country, officials say.

Declan Walsh reported from London, and Rod Nordland from Kabul, Afghanistan. Reporting was contributed by Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan, Matthew Rosenberg from Washington, and Sharifullah Sahak and Jawad Sukhanyar from Kabul.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Pakistan May Release Taliban Commander to Aid Afghan Peace Talks. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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