By Fisnik Abrashi
Associated Press
Saturday, April 7, 2007

KABUL, April 6 -- President Hamid Karzai acknowledged for the first time Friday that he has met with Taliban militants in attempts to bring peace to Afghanistan, which is struggling to quell a rising insurgency.

Karzai's assertion -- immediately rejected as false by a spokesman for the hard-line Islamic movement -- came as a suicide car bomber killed four people and wounded four others in Kabul, and insurgents overran a district in the volatile southeast.

In the past, Karzai has offered, without success, to hold talks with the fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Some officials in his government, including provincial governors, are thought to have held informal talks with militants in the south and east, but with little apparent success in calming the insurgency.

"We have had representatives from the Taliban meeting with different bodies of Afghan government for a long time," Karzai said at a news conference. "I have had some Taliban coming to speak to me as well."

Karzai did not disclose any details of the meetings, when they took place or who attended.

Hundreds of former Taliban members, including a sprinkling of former senior commanders and officials, have reconciled with the government since the movement was ousted from power in the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Current rebel leaders have apparently refused to hold talks, and in the past year, thousands more fighters have picked up guns and joined the insurgency, which in 2006 alone led to the deaths of about 4,000 people, mainly militants.

Zabiullah Mujaheed, a purported spokesman for the militants, said Taliban leaders "do not want to talk to a puppet government."

"Karzai's government has no power and all their policies are designed by America," Mujaheed said by telephone from an undisclosed location. "If the U.S. wants to negotiate with the Taliban, they should first leave our country."

At the news conference, Karzai, whose U.S.-backed administration is increasingly unpopular because of insecurity in the south and east and continuing poverty, struck a conciliatory tone, urging Afghan militants to lay down their weapons and join his government.

"Afghan Taliban are always welcome, they belong to this country. . . . They are the sons of this soil," Karzai said. "As they repent, as they regret, as they want to come back to their own country, they are welcome."

But he said that fighters from neighboring countries such as Pakistan "should be destroyed."

"They are destroying our lives, killing our people, they are not welcome, and there will be no talks with them," Karzai said.