ISLAMABAD, July 1: A Taliban emissary sat face-to-face this week with a senior Afghan government official responsible for peace talks in a rare high-level gathering between the bitter adversaries, an official said on Saturday.

The encounter at a peace and reconciliation conference in Kyoto, Japan, was a positive sign in faltering attempts to find a peaceful end to the conflict in Afghanistan. It also provided an unusual opportunity for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s government to sit down with its enemies — the Taliban and the Hezb-i-Islami militant group. Siddiq Mansour Ansari, a peace activist who was invited to attend the meeting this week at Kyoto’s Doshisha University, said it was the third peace and reconciliation conference organised by the school but the first time the Taliban had sent an emissary.

The Taliban’s former planning minister, Qari Din Mohammed Hanif, took part in the conference “to explain the policies of the Islamic Emirate,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told The Associated Press by telephone.

The Afghan government was represented by Mohammed Masoon Stanikzai, a senior member of the government’s High Peace Council, which is responsible for talks with the Taliban.

Mr Ansari said the conference was not intended to find a peace settlement but to air ideas and differences.    “In this third Doshisha conference all the parties presented their ideas and agendas but there were no concrete agreements,” he said.

Mr Karzai and US officials are trying to draw the Taliban back to negotiations towards a peace deal between the Afghan government and the militants that would end a war that American commanders have said cannot be won with military power.

The Taliban have refused to negotiate with the Karzai government, saying the US holds effective control in Afghanistan. The Obama administration has set a 2014 deadline to withdraw forces, and is trying to frame talks among the Afghans beforehand.

Qari Hanif said peace talks with the United States in Qatar were suspended earlier this year after the US reneged on a promise to release Afghans from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allow them to go where they pleased, according to Mr Ansari.

In an attempt to restart the  talks, the Obama administration is considering sending several Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay to a prison in Afghanistan, US and Afghan officials said.

Under the proposal, some Taliban fighters or affiliates captured in the early days of the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan and later sent to Guantanamo under the label of enemy combatants would be transferred out of full US control but not released.

But Mr Mujahed said the White House’s proposal won’t coax the Taliban back to the negotiating table.

“We want the prisoners to be freed and allowed to go anywhere,” he told the AP. “But we do not want that they be released from one prison and shifted to another prison, which means from Guantanamo to Bagram. The Americans are not sincere in talks and they are responsible for the stalemate.”

Meanwhile, the Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami, despite reports of infighting in Afghanistan, found common ground at the Kyoto conference in their demand that all foreign troops, including trainers, leave Afghanistan after 2014.

“The Taliban insisted on complete withdrawal of foreign troops from the country after 2014 and called the Karzai government a puppet saying they would not negotiate with Karzai or his government,” Mr Ansari said.

Mr Ansari said the conference would seek to set up an international commission that could act as a peace broker between the Afghan government and militants.—AP