(AFP) – Sep 10, 2007

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) — The Taliban said Monday it was ready for talks with the Afghan government after President Hamid Karzai offered negotiations in a bid to end the rebels' nearly six-year bloody insurgency.

Karzai made the offer on Sunday, with the insurgency spiralling to its highest level this year, saying peace could not be achieved without dialogue.

"For the sake of national interests ... we are fully ready for talks with the government," senior Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told AFP.

"Whenever the government formally asks for negotiations, we are ready," he said. The movement had a "limited" number of conditions for a meeting, he added without elaborating.

Ahmadi said the Taliban could hold talks with the Afghan government as they had with South Korean officials over 21 hostages who were freed after several meetings.

"As we did hold negotiations with the South Korean government, we can hold talks at an even higher level with the government," he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

Seoul was criticised for negotiating with "terrorists" to free the 21 aid workers, who had been captured mid-July.

Alluding to this, Ahmadi said it was not clear if Karzai's offer was genuine. "Our understanding is the government, which terms the Taliban as terrorists, would not ask for negotiations," he said.

Karzai has regularly offered talks with the Taliban, which was in government between 1996 and 2001, and there have been rumours that contact has already been made.

But he denied Monday that "formal negotiations" were under way with the militants but said he was ready to start such dialogue if he could find the "address for the Taliban."

Ahmadi said: "If they want our address -- we're among the people. If they're honest for talks, we're ready for it."

Karzai also said Monday the radical Hizb-i-Islami faction of former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, which is fighting the government and its allies separately from the Taliban, was welcome to join a peace process.

Hekmatyar's spokesman, Mohammad Haroon Zarghoon, told AFP the faction's position remained that it would only meet the government if the tens of thousands of international troops in Afghanistan pulled out.

Karzai's previous suggestions of negotiations have not included the leaders of the intensifying uprising and he did not say Monday if the new offer extended to Hekmatyar or Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

Both are wanted by the United States.

Karzai set up a reconciliation commission in 2005 in the hope of persuading rebels to put down their weapons. Officials say around 2,000 low-level Taliban and other militants have signed up.

The Taliban has in the past two years redoubled its insurgency, which it launched after being removed from government in 2001 for not handing over its Al-Qaeda allies after the September 11 attacks on the United States.

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