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WASHINGTON - The United States will begin key talks with Afghanistan next year, a move that deepens a partnership with Kabul five years after American forces helped oust the Islamist Taleban, a senior US official said on Tuesday.
Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said he accepted an invitation by visiting Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta to hold the first round of talks hosted by President Hamid Karzai in Kabul in January.
Afghanistan will join Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Japan and China and others on a list of countries with which the United States holds periodic senior-level talks.
Burns, speaking at a conference in Washington on Afghan reconstruction, repeated the US view that a surge of fighting and suicide bombings in southern Afghanistan did not represent a "strategic threat" to Karzai's government.
"While we've seen an increase in the number of attacks in the regions and some of the provincial cities and even in Kabul and Kandahar themselves over the past few months, we do not believe that these attacks pose a strategic threat to the central government," he said.
The clashes also reflected Nato and other allied troops "taking the battle to the Taleban, along with the Afghan forces" in southern and eastern parts of the country, Burns said.
Fighting, mainly in the Taleban's southern stronghold, is the worst since US-led forces drove the group from power in 2001.
More than 3000 people have died this year, mostly rebels but including hundreds of civilians and about 150 foreign soldiers.
- REUTERS
