By Lyse Doucet BBC News, Oslo Pakistan has recently stepped up its campaign against the Taliban The UN's former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has strongly criticised Pakistan's recent arrest of high-ranking Taliban leaders.Mr Eide told the BBC the arrests had completely stopped a channel of secret communications with the UN. Pakistani officials insist the arrests were not an attempt to spoil talks. Mr Eide confirmed publicly for the first time that his secret contacts with senior Taliban members had begun a year ago. This has to be an Afghan process Kai Eide He said they involved face-to-face talks in Dubai and elsewhere. "The first contact was probably last spring, then of course you moved into the election process where there was a lull in activity, and then communication picked up when the election process was over, and it continued to pick up until a certain moment a few weeks ago," he said. Mr Eide said there were now many channels of communication with the Taliban, including those involving senior representatives of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.[Read more...]