KABUL - The Taliban are willing to resume talks with the US under certain circumstances but are reluctant to begin dialogue with the Karzai administration, a Taliban source told Pakistan's Daily Times Newspaper.
After the Tokyo conference, efforts to convince the Taliban to talk with the Afghan government were ramped up with Pakistan taking a major role in this regard, according to a spokesman for Pakistan's Foreign office Abdul Basit.

Basit declined to provide further details about what his country was doing to convince the Taliban to talk, but said that Pakistan has always urged all groups in Afghanistan to take part in the reconciliation process, according to the news report.

"Pakistan is a facilitator of peace in the country and would support the Afghan-led reconciliation process," Basit told the paper.
Other reports said that Taliban have agreed to restart the suspended talks with Washington in Qatar, but are still refusing to negotiate with the Kabul government.

However, Afghanistan's High Peace Council Foreign Relations Advisor Mohammad Ismail Qasimyar said that US cannot take any decision on behalf of Afghanistan and the peace negotiation should an Afghan-led process.

"The US cannot decide on behalf of the Afghan people - it can only have a facilitator role," he told TOLOnews.
"The peace process is an Afghan-owned process," he added.

The US-Taliban talks halted in February when the Taliban said that Washington did not have a clear vision for the outcome and had not been consistent with its promises. (Tolo News)