Afghan govt denies asking U.N. to cut 50 from blacklist

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's government on Tuesday denied asking the United Nations to remove as many as 50 former Taliban members from a U.N. blacklist, but said consideration was being given to a new request.

President Hamid Karzai's office said U.S. newspaper reports Afghanistan would ask for 30 to 50 names be delisted to remove Taliban who were not part of al Qaeda or terrorists were "inaccurate."

"The government of Afghanistan has not submitted any list of 50 people," Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omer told journalists.

Karzai's office five years ago submitted 20 names to the United Nation Security Council to strike from a blacklist of 137 names to help in reconciliation talks with insurgents, Omer said.

Five had since been removed, while another five had died. Negotiations with the United Nations on processing the other 10 names were continuing under an agreement with Afghanistan and the Security Council, he said.

But the government did, he said, expect to add more names to the list in the wake of a "Peace Jirga" last month which recommended negotiations with moderate Taliban leaders and other insurgents to end the worsening nine-year war.

"We expect that more names will be put up, but there has not been any firm decision on that," Omer said. "We will make every effort to remove every person on the list who is not a danger to Afghanistan and the international community.

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1267 freezes assets and limits travel of senior figures linked to the Taliban, as well as al Qaeda, but recent Afghan efforts to engage some insurgents in diplomacy have raised doubts about who should be on the list.

The United States opposes the delisting of some of the most violent Taliban fighters, including leader Mohammad Omar.

At least five people on the list are former Taliban officials who now serve in parliament or privately mediate between the Afghan government and the insurgents battling NATO and Afghan security forces.

Omer said he could not name anyone on the current list while negotiations continued, but Afghanistan was having to supply the United Nations with justifications for their removal.

That included more evidence that they have renounced violence, embraced the new Afghan constitution and severed any links with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

(Editing by David Fox)