President Barack Obama declares America should be ready to talk to the Taliban

By Ben Farmer in Kabul

American forces are prepared to make overtures to moderate Taliban commanders using an approach that saw insurgents in Iraq turn against al-Qaeda, President Barack Obama has said.

President Obama said the military was not winning the counter insurgency war in Afghanistan as he opened the door for peace negotiations.

By persuading Iraqi Sunni insurgents to turn on al-Qaeda extremists, US commanders engineered a sharply drop in violence in Iraq.

President Obama said deals similar to those implemented by General David Petraeus in Iraq could be cut in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq." "There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region, but the situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex," he told the New York Times.

Coalition military commanders have repeatedly stressed the increasingly violent insurgency in Afghanistan cannot be solved by military means.

Hamid Karzai, president of Afghanistan, has called for peace talks with members of the country's former Taliban regime and offered Mullah Omar, it's fugitive leader, safe passage for negotiations.

The Saudi Arabian royal family has also attempted to sponsor talks between insurgents and the Afghan government, but little public progress has been made.

Analysts say the insurgency of disparate groups of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, foreign fighters, former jihadi commanders, alienated tribal leaders, drug barons and common bandits could be too fractured for negotiations.

Last year was the bloodiest since the Taliban government fell in 2001.

President Obama conceded that conditions had deteriorated and fighting is expected to be heavier this year as the first of 17,000 US reinforcements enter the fight.

"The Taliban is bolder than it was. I think ... in the southern regions of the country, you're seeing them attack us in ways that we have not seen previously," President Obama said. "The national government still has not gained the confidence of the Afghan people. And so it's going to be critical for us to not only, get through these national elections to stabilize the security situation, but we've got to recast our policy so that our military, diplomatic and development goals are all aligned to ensure that al-Qaeda and extremists that would do us harm don't have the kinds of safe havens that allow them to operate."