Arsala Rahmani, Top Afghan Peace Negotiator, Shot Dead in Kabul

At the Los Angeles Times, "Afghan assassination casts more gloom over peace efforts."

KABUL, Afghanistan — A brazen daytime assassination on Sunday offered a grim reminder of stymied progress in a key part of NATO's effort to wind down the Afghan war: peace talks with the Taliban.

Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of the Afghan government body set up to conduct negotiations with the militant group, was shot and killed while traveling by car through the Afghan capital, police said. Coming less than nine months after the assassination of the head of the High Peace Council, the killing cast yet more gloom over Western-backed efforts to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table.

The Obama administration had hoped to have substantive progress on the negotiating front to cite when a NATO summit convenes next week in Chicago. Instead, preliminary contacts appear to have broken down.

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