NATO general: No evidence Iran supplying Taliban

While Iranian mortar rounds and other weapons have been found on Afghan battlefields, there is no evidence that Tehran is supplying weapons to the Taliban, the US general who leads the NATO war effort in the country said on June 5. The commander of the NATO's 36,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Gen. Dan McNeill, said Iranian mortars were routinely found in Afghan weapons caches, but there was no evidence they were part of a Tehran-organized operation. "There certainly are weapons or munitions of Iranian origin, but when you say 'weapons being provided by Iran' that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting those weapons here," he said at ISAF's heavily fortified main base in Kabul. "That's not my view at all." Iranian mortar rounds arrive in Afghanistan from many countries, he said. "I just have no information to support that there's anything formal in some arrangement out of Iran to provide weapons here." McNeill, who took control of NATO forces in Afghanistan in February, also said that some lower-level Taliban militants could be incorporated into Afghan politics, but he saw no hope for a peace pact with the leadership of the Afghan rebel forces.