British Foreign Secretary David Miliband urged Afghans on Wednesday to push energetically for a peace settlement with Taliban insurgents and said Afghanistan's neighbors must support such an agreement.
Miliband's conciliatory comments, in a speech to be given in the United States later on Wednesday, reflect growing acceptance in the West that Taliban fighters who break ties to al Qaeda have a role to play in the country's future, Reuters reported.
"Now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigor and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort," Miliband said in excerpts published in advance of a speech he is to give at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Eight years after the U.S.-led invasion, it is not enough to explain to people why the war started, he said.
"We need to set out how it will be ended," Miliband said in the speech called "The war in Afghanistan: How to end it."
"Afghanistan will never achieve a sustainable peace unless many more Afghans are inside the political system, and the neighbors are onside with the political settlement," he said.
The British public is increasingly anxious about military losses in Afghanistan -- six British soldiers have died there in the past 10 days, bringing the total to 272 since 2001.
The government, which faces an uphill struggle to win an election due in the next few months, needs to show it has an exit strategy for its 9,500 troops in Afghanistan.
Miliband said a political settlement should involve "all of Afghanistan's neighbors as well as those parts of the insurgency willing permanently to sever ties with al Qaeda, give up their armed struggle and live within the Afghan constitutional framework."
There would be no settlement in Afghanistan without Pakistan's involvement, and without India, Russia and China being involved in the search for solutions, he said.