the official said.

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The United States’ European partners in Afghanistan, with different histories and under far stronger domestic pressure to withdraw their troops, have always been more amenable to a negotiated settlement. “What it really boils down to is the Americans both supporting and in some cases maybe even participating in talking with the enemy,” the first European official said. “If you strip everything away,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], that’s the deal here. For so long, politically, it’s been a deal breaker in the United States, and with some people it still is.”
“If you talk about it while you’re doing it, it’s not going to work,” said one European official whose country has troops in Afghanistan.
The talks follow inconclusive meetings, hosted by Saudi Arabia, that ended more than a year ago. While emphasizing the preliminary nature of the current discussions, the sources said that for the first time they believe that Taliban representatives are fully authorized to speak for the Quetta Shura, the Afghan Taliban organization based in Pakistan, and its leader, Mohammad Omar.
U.S. officials depicted a somewhat different progression leading to the same conclusion, insisting that the time for real negotiations has only now arrived. Although last fall’s strategy review concluded that defeat of the Taliban was an unrealistic goal, it was followed this year by “a period of time where we’ve been focused on getting our inputs in place, moving resources into Afghanistan,” a senior administration official said. The Afghan government has also been positioning itself for serious talks, he said, through international conferences in January and July, the convening of a “peace jirga,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],” or council, in Kabul and last week’s naming of the members of an official government reconciliation team.
Karen DeYoung, Peter Finn and Craig Whitlock @ Washington Post:
Reports of the talks come amid what Afghan, Arab and European sources said they see as a distinct change of heart by the Obama administration toward full backing of negotiations. Although President Obama and his national security team have long said the war would not be won by military means alone, sources said the administration only recently appeared open to talks rather than resisting them.
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“They are very, very serious about finding a way out,” one source close to the talks said of the Taliban.
Although Omar’s representatives have long publicly insisted that negotiations were impossible until all foreign troops withdraw, a position seemingly buoyed by the Taliban’s resilience on the battlefield, sources said the Quetta Shura has begun to talk about a comprehensive agreement that would include participation of some Taliban figures in the government and the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops on an agreed timeline.
“We did not have consensus, and there were some who thought they could do it militarily,” said a second European official. The Europeans said the American shift began in the summer, as combat intensified with smaller-than-expected NATO gains despite the arrival of the full complement of new U.S. troops, amid rising U.S. public opposition to the war.
“Now, yeah, there’s a sense that we mean what we say” when voicing support for a political process, the official said. “The president’s view is that we have to do these things at the same time. We can’t take the approach that we’re just going to be putting our foot on the gas on the military side of things and will get around to the political,” he said.
Whatever domestic political difficulties the administration may fear would result from a negotiated deal with the Taliban, this official said, would be resolved by ending the war earlier rather than later. “A successful policy solves the political problem,” he said.
The leadership knows “that they are going to be sidelined,” the source said. “They know that more radical elements are being promoted within their rank and file outside their control. . . . All these things are making them absolutely sure that, regardless of [their success in] the war, they are not in a winning position.”
Last month,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Obama pressed his national security team to be more specific about what it meant by a political solution, and “reinforced” the need to be working simultaneously on the military and political sides of the equation, the official said.
A half-dozen sources directly involved in or on the margins of the talks agreed to discuss them on the condition of anonymity. All emphasized the preliminary nature of the talks, even as they differed on how specific they have been. All expressed concern that any public description of the meetings would undercut them.
Taliban representatives and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai have begun secret, high-level talks over a negotiated end to the war, according to Afghan and Arab sources.
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