LONDON - U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke welcomed a U.N. committee's removal of five former senior Taliban officials from a sanctions list on Wednesday and called for the list to be overhauled. The decision by a Security Council committee, the first time former Taliban officials have been removed from the list, came before a 60-nation conference in London on Thursday to set a framework for handing security over to Afghan forces. NATO powers are expected to back President Hamid Karzai's plan to reach out to Taliban insurgents. Removal from the U.N. sanctions list is among the incentives under discussion. Holbrooke called the U.N. committee's decision, which means the five will no longer be subject to international travel bans and asset freezes, a "long overdue step". "That list ... should be re-examined and scrubbed down. There are people on it who are dead, there are people on it who shouldn't be on it," Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told a news briefing. "We welcome the forward progress of the U.N. yesterday ... I hope that that process of refining the list and improving it will continue," he said. The decision leaves 137 Taliban on the sanctions list. The committee will continue a thorough review of the list as demanded by recent resolutions of the Security Council, Western Security Council diplomats said. US President Barack Obama is sending an extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to try to break a military stalemate there in an eight-year conflict with the hardline Islamists who ruled from Kabul from 1996 till U.S.-led forces toppled them after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. In recent days, three US or British generals have held out the possibility of an eventual peace deal with the Taliban. Holbrooke said people often confused "reintegration" -- attempts to persuade low-ranking fighters with the Taliban to lay down their arms -- and "reconciliation" -- whether the Kabul government can find common ground with the Taliban.
