KABUL (Reuters) – Afghanistan will accept a Taliban office in Qatar to help peace talks but no foreign power can get involved in the process without its consent, the government's peace council said, as efforts gather pace to find a solution to the 10-year war.

Afghanistan's High Peace Council, in a note to foreign missions, has set out ground rules for engaging the Taliban after Kabul grew concerned that the United States and Qatar, helped by Germany, had secretly agreed with the Taliban to open an office in the Qatari capital, Doha.

It said that negotiations with the Taliban could only begin after they stopped violence against civilians, cut ties to al Qaeda, and accepted the Afghan constitution which guarantees civil rights and liberties, including rights for women.

The council, according to a copy of the 11-point note made available to Reuters, also said any peace process with the Taliban would have to have the support of Pakistan since members of the insurgent group were based there.

"The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is in agreement regarding the opening of an office for the armed opposition, but only to move forward the peace process and conduct negotiations," the council said.

The government would prefer such an office in either Saudi Arabia or Turkey, both of which it is close to, but was not averse to Doha as long as the authority of the Afghan state was not eroded and the office was only established for talks, officials said.

"We are saying Saudi or Turkey are preferable, we are not saying it has to be there only. The only condition is it should be in an Islamic country," said a government official.

President Hamid Karzai's administration recalled its ambassador from Doha last week, apparently angry that it had been kept in the dark about the latest round of negotiations with the insurgent group.

Officials said Kabul was also deeply concerned about reports that the United States was considering the transfer of a small number of Afghan prisoners from Guantanamo Bay military prison to Doha as a prelude to the talks.

"We are a sovereign country, we have laws. How can you transfer our prisoners from one country to another. Already it's a violation to have them in Guantanamo Bay," the official said.

The Afghan government wanted the prisoners to be returned to its custody, the official said.

Reuters reported this month that the United States was considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay into Afghan government custody as part of accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy.

"We have no problem with this. In fact we have been demanding this for a while. These are Afghan prisoners," said the official, who declined to be identified.

The tension between the Karzai administration and the United States over engaging the Taliban underscores the challenges of seeking a political settlement as the West prepares to withdraw most combat troops from the country by 2014.

Efforts to engage the insurgent group have faced a string of setbacks, the most recent being the assassination of the head of the peace council and former president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, in September at the hands of a suicide bomber who pretended to be a Taliban emissary.

HARDENING OF POSITIONS

It led to a hardening of positions with Karzai saying the government could not talk to suicide bombers and that there should be an address for the Taliban so that negotiators know they are talking to the right representatives.

"We are committed to the reconciliation process, the experience of the last 10 years shows no military solution is possible. Talking to the armed opposition is the key in this regard," said presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi.


The peace council, laying down the markers for engagement with the Taliban, said well known figures from both the Taliban and the government had to be involved in talks.


It said that "before any negotiations can take place, violence against Afghan people must stop and that the armed opposition must cut ties to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups."


It also said that the Taliban must accept the constitution and honor the gains made in the last 10 years since they were ousted from power, conditions that the Taliban have shown no sign of accepting.


The Taliban do not accept the constitution and have vowed to carry on fighting until all foreign troops have left the country.


The peace council said Pakistani support was necessary for talks to take place, another condition that makes the task harder because of fraught ties between the United States and Pakistan which fears it is being shut out of the process.


Opening a Taliban office in a third country itself is seen as a way to create distance from Pakistan which has longstanding ties to the insurgent group.


But the government official said he did not think the peace council had laid down such tough conditions that the talks would fail even before they started.


"We don't think it's a deal breaker. We are quite optimistic," he said.


(Editing by Robert Birsel)

TORONTO – Maple Leafs coach Ron Wilson has gotten his Christmas wish.
Two days after hinting on Twitter of his desire for a new contract, Wilson says the team has given him an extension.
"'He came! He came!' Remember saying that as a little kid? Well he did: I got a new Red Ryder BB gun and a contract extension!" Wilson tweeted Sunday morning.
The team did not immediately respond to an email seeking confirmation. Wilson tweeted Friday that what he wanted for Christmas was a new contract from general manager Brian Burke.
"This Xmas could be better if Santa stuffs a certain piece of paper in my stocking. whatcouldthatbe," Wilson posted on his Twitter account.
The 56-year-old Wilson is in the final season of a four-year contract. The Leafs are sixth in the Eastern Conference with 40 points. Toronto has not made the playoffs in three previously seasons under Wilson, who is 119-120-42 with the Leafs.
Wilson, a defenseman as a player, was selected by the Leafs in the 1975 draft. He has a 637-546-101-88 coaching record with Anaheim, Washington, San Jose and Toronto. He is 47-48 in the playoffs.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt's military rulers are studying a proposal from their own advisers to bring forward parliamentary elections by two weeks after demands from protesters and politicians to speed up transition to civilian rule, an advisory council member said Sunday.

Many Egyptians believe the army is no longer fit to manage security on the ground and carry out difficult reforms at a time of political and economic crisis.

Friday, thousands rallied in Cairo and other cities to demand the army give up power and to vent anger after 17 people were killed in recent protests where troops beat and clubbed women and men even as they lay on the ground.

Voting for the upper house, or Shura Assembly, is due to be held in three rounds beginning on January 29 and ending on March 5. It follows a similarly protracted vote for the lower house that began in November and is due to end in mid-January.

"The military council has agreed to study the option of shortening the election time for the Shura by two weeks, to end on February 22," Sherif Zahran, a member of a council advising the military on the transition to civilian rule told Reuters.

Zahran said the judiciary had agreed to the idea of squeezing Shura elections into two stages instead of three and that a plan to shorten the vote tallying process was being studied also.

"This would allow for both the (lower house of) parliament and Shura to convene in a joint meeting by the end of February," Zahran told Reuters.

Once parliament convenes, Egypt will draw up a constitution and a presidential vote is planned before the end of June.

Protests continue daily in Tahrir Square. Several hundred protesters have set up camp there. Some are demanding the army bring forward the presidential vote to as early as January 25, the first anniversary of the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.

Others, worrying that 10 months after Mubarak's downfall Egypt remains in disarray, protested Friday to end protests so order can be restored and the economy revitalized.

A source close to the army said the military council, including leader Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, was meeting to decide on what was needed to speed up the Shura vote.

"Other changes will have to take place if this plan passes, such as how long the constitutional committee will take to draft the constitution," the source said, adding that Tantawi would first have to ratify any new voting timetable.

No one at the military council was available to comment.

Analysts say a speedy transfer could play into the hands of military by boosting the chances of presidential candidates with close ties to the army, including Amr Moussa.

Moussa, a former foreign minister and ex-head of the Arab League, said an earlier presidential was also being studied.

"Field Marshal Tantawi said presidential elections will be held no later than June 30. This means there is room for presidential elections to come sooner," Moussa, who is also a member of the advisory council, told Reuters Sunday.

(Writing by Patrick Werr)

QUANTICO, Va. – Call it a playground for Bambi and G-Men, where imaginary criminals are hunted and deer are the spectators.
The 547-acre FBI Academy, where some of the nation's best marksmen fire off more than 1 million bullets every month, happens to be one of the safest places for deer during hunting season.
The property on the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va., is home to some of the FBI's most elite forces and training programs as well as a de facto wildlife refuge where deer, fox, wild turkeys, groundhogs and vultures roam fearless and free.
In recent years, a black bear was spotted running across a parking lot, and a groundhog cornered an FBI agent coming out of the cafeteria, hoping to score some human food, FBI spokesman Kurt Crawford said. Turkey vultures are often seen perched atop the 500,000-square-foot national crime lab where the FBI analyzes evidence, including the remains of the former al-Qaida leader in Iraq.
The wild animals are as much a fixture at the academy as the hostage rescue team and criminal profilers.
The most common furry friends on the sprawling campus some 30 miles outside Washington are the deer, a regular at the shooting ranges, driving courses and physical training trails.
On a December afternoon, deer grazed above one of the academy's 16 practice shooting ranges. They stood just 15 feet away from the paper targets. Nearby, shots popped loudly from a Colt M4 Carbine rifle, and the white-tailed deer did not flinch.
"They're pretty immune to the sound," said Sean Boyle, supervisory special agent bomb technician and principal firearms instructor for the Critical Incident Response Group based at the academy. The deer typically graze on top of the berm, about 15 feet away from the targets and rarely go directly in the line of fire. Boyle said he doesn't recall an instance where a deer was shot accidentally.
"It's like they think, `We've pushed the limit for this far, and all our generations have pushed the limit for this far,'" Boyle said. "They're just so docile around here. They don't know what a gun is."
The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries does not keep direct tabs on the deer population at the FBI academy, but a spokeswoman said statewide the deer population has remained about the same over the past decade, partly because of regulated hunting. Licensed deer hunters are allowed on parts of the Marine Corps base but not at the academy where the FBI does not hunt its animals.
At the FBI Academy, the deer have even become part of the training in some of the driving courses, said Tim Moles, the supervisory special agent who oversees the Tactical and Emergency Vehicle Operations Center, where recruits learn to avoid crashing their cars and conduct surveillance without being spotted. The deer are convenient when recruits learn to avoid collisions, Moles said. "There's times when it seems like they're playing chicken with us," Moles said. "We respect them because they can do damage. We'd rather avoid all deer stories in this end of the academy."
For the most part, the deer have stayed out of trouble. Twice, however, deer have eaten freshly-planted pansies at the academy's 9/11 memorial courtyard, Crawford said. Eventually a fence was built to keep the flowers off limits.
Deer have been known to interrupt physical training, too.
"We've had the deer walk across the middle of the track during the 300-meter sprint," said Susann Dreiling, unit chief of the academy's physical training unit.
To become an agent, recruits must pass a physical fitness test. They are scored on how fast they can run and how many push-ups and sit-ups they perform. Sometimes, training will involve running a quarter-mile path along the lake area of the academy, stopping for push-ups, running some more and breaking to box, Dreiling said.
During these exercises, a mother and her fawns are often close by.
"They just stand there and watch as if they're evaluating them," Dreiling said, "just like the instructors are."

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Illinois-based Mead Johnson says another batch of tests done on its Enfamil Premium Newborn infant formula found no trace of the bacteria tied to the death of a Missouri baby.
Preliminary hospital tests indicated 10-day-old Avery Cornett died Dec. 18 of a rare infection caused by bacteria known as Cronobacter sakazakii. The source of the bacteria hasn't been determined, but it can be found in powdered formula.
Avery had consumed Enfamil Newborn formula.
National retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Walgreen Co., Kroger Co. and Safeway have since pulled a batch of the powdered infant formula from their shelves.
The Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and the Missouri Department of Health are investigating Avery's death.
Mead Johnson said Sunday it shared its test results with investigators.