President Hamid Karzai has confirmed that his government has been in "unofficial" talks with the Taliban to end the nine-year-war by making peace with the militants, DPA reported.
"We have been talking to the Taliban as countryman to countryman," Karzai told CNN's Larry King Live in an interview slated to air on Monday night.
He said that there was no "regular official contact with the Taliban with a fixed address, but rather unofficial personal contacts have been going on for quite some time."
The president said his government was ready to reconcile with those Taliban who were Afghans and were driven to violence by factors beyond their control.
"They are like kids who have run away ... from the family. The family should try to bring them back and give them better discipline and incorporate them back into their family and society," he said.
But he said that those who were part of al-Qaeda or other terrorist networks and were ideologically against his government and the United States could not be included in the peace process.
The confirmation came amid mounting reports about secret talks with Taliban leaders and other insurgent groups. The US media reported last week that the Taliban and other insurgent groups were holding secret talks with the government, with the backing of the US.
Citing unnamed Afghan and Arab sources, the reports said that the talks involved representatives authorized by the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has been at large since the ouster of his regime in Kabul in late 2001.
On Sunday, former Afghan president, Burhanuddin Rabbani was chosen to lead a council designed to coax militants into peace talks.
The 70-member peace council was formed by Karzai earlier this month to broker an end to the war with the Taliban insurgents.