Nato forces 'are assisting Afghan talks with Taleban'

The official, who asked not to be identified, said talks were in the very early stages and could not be described as negotiations.

Nato allies including Britain and the United States have previously voiced their support for reconciliation efforts aimed at ending the nine-year-old war.

"We have facilitated to various degrees the contacts between senior Taleban members and the highest levels of the Afghan government," the official said.

The official declined to offer specifics about the degree to which the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan was facilitating those contacts, but noted the discussions took place in Kabul.

This would imply that Nato troops are allowing senior Taleban delegates to travel to the Afghan capital city, in what would otherwise be a high-risk area for them.

Earlier yesterday, the Afghan Taleban rejected media reports they were in secret negotiations with president Hamid Karzai's government to end the war, in which more than 2,000 foreign troops have been killed.

The Nato official played down the level of the contacts. "What president Karzai, his spokesman, has stated is accurate: these are in the very preliminary stages of discussions," the official said.

"So you would not yet characterise this as a negotiation. These are preliminary discussions."

In a bloody day for Nato troops in Afghanistan, insurgents killed six service members yesterday, including four who died in a single bomb blast in the volatile south of the country.

One service member was killed in the east in an attack early in the day, and another died in the south in a separate roadside bombing - the weapon of choice for militants in countering a large-scale Nato-Afghan operation in the region.

Nato did not provide nationalities of the dead, or specific locations where the attacks occurred.

This has been the deadliest year for international troops in the nine-year Afghan conflict. At least 34 Nato service members have been killed so far this month. More than 2,000 have died since the 2001 invasion.

Troop numbers have been ramped up in the past year to turn the screws on the insurgents. Fighting has intensified and casualties have mounted.The nearly 150,000 international troops and 220,000 Afghan government security forces - whose recruitment and training has been put on a fast track - are still struggling to gain the upper hand against an estimated 30,000 insurgents.

Nato's top commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, offered a cautiously optimistic assessment of the transition of security duties to Afghan forces during a briefing with alliance representatives in Brussels yesterday.

"There are areas of the country that are reasonably secure already, and Afghan security forces are capable of handling security already," his civilian counterpart, Ambassador Mark Sedwill, said after the session.

The process should be completed by 2014, although some allied troops - including special forces and trainers - will remain in Afghanistan after that date, Mr Sedwill said.

Nato and Afghan forces are increasingly targeting insurgent leaders.

A commander and three other militants from the Haqqani network - a Pakistan-based faction of the Taleban with close ties to al-Qaeda - were killed in a firefight with Nato and Afghan forces in eastern Khost province's Spera district overnight on Tuesday, a Natostatement said.

On Monday, a coalition airstrike killed Taleban commander Shirin Agha and another militant in northern Kunduz province, Nato said.