Kabul: Afghan President Hamid Karzai said today that his government has had increasing contact with Taliban insurgents this year, including several talks this week with militant leaders living in exile.

Karzai said militants in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan have increasingly approached the government in the last eight months, even as the country goes through its most violent phase since the ouster of the Taliban after the US-led invasion in 2001.

"Only this week I have had more than five or six major contacts, approaches, by the leadership of the Taliban trying to find out if they can come back to Afghanistan," Karzai told reporters in Kabul after meeting NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, though he didn't specify about the leaders whom he had tried to contact.

"We are willing to talk. Those of the Taliban who are not part of al-Qaida or the terrorist networks, who do not want to be violent against the Afghan people ... Those elements are welcome," he said.

In the past Karzai has offered to hold talks with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and to give militants a position in government in exchange for peace. Omar rejected those offers.

Source : PTI