Karzai claims having indirect contact with one-eyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar

Kabul, Feb 22 (ANI): Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said his government is indirectly in touch with Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

He also claimed that Afghanistan talks with the Taliban through intermediaries on a daily basis.

"We talk to Taliban every day. We were talking to them just a few days ago somewhere around this region," Australia's SBS television quoted Karzai, as saying.

"(But) not personally," Karzai said when asked if he had spoken with Omar. "I mean not directly, person to person. But through intermediaries, yes."

Afghan and US officials are seeking negotiations with Taliban as a way of ensuring peace after foreign combat troops leave in 2014, though the talks lay in a very fragile state and the Islamist group recently rejected they existed at all, the Daily Times reports.

Karzai also stressed that peace talks with the Taliban, who were originally backed by Islamabad, were key to regional stability and bringing peace as well to Pakistan, a player seen as crucial to efforts to end the war in Afghanistan.

"It's no longer Afghanistan that is the subject of conversation, or the issue. It is Pakistan as well. It is peace in Pakistan as well. It is stability in Pakistan as well," he added. (ANI)