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Afghanistan

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for repeating the Statement and say how much I welcome these quarterly Statements, which are extraordinarily useful. I underline what has been said previously by the opposition Member and ask the noble Lord to confirm before the next quarterly Statement—even in writing—that the generous amount of aid allocated for development work in Afghanistan will go directly to relevant aid programmes run by the private and NGO sectors, not via the Armed Forces. The question I really want to ask is: is a serious peace process involving discussions with some elements of the Taliban now being considered?