Karzai Met With Taliban

AP:

President Hamid Karzai acknowledged for the first time Friday he has met with Taliban militants in attempts to bring peace to Afghanistan, which is struggling to quell a rising insurgency.

Karzai's assertion - immediately rejected as false by a Taliban spokesman - came as a suicide car bomber killed four people and wounded four others in Kabul, and militants overran a district in the volatile southeast.

In the past, Karzai has offered, without success, to hold talks with the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and renegade warlord Gulbudin Hekmatyar. Some officials in his government, including provincial governors, are thought to have held informal talks with militants in the south and east, but with little apparent success to calm the insurgency.