Hamid Karzai has held face-to-face talks with active insurgents representing one of the most violent rebel leaders operating in Afghanistan, the Afghan president's office said today.
Karzai's spokesman said the unprecedented meeting took place "a couple of days back" between the president and top-level officials from the militant wing of Hezb-e-Islami, the movement run by Islamist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar from his sanctuary in Pakistan.
According to the organisation's spokesman Haroun Zarghoun, the delegates presented a 15-point plan, including a call for foreign troops to withdraw from Afghanistan within six months, starting in July. Six months after that an interim government would be appointed and preparations made for fresh elections.
Matt Waldman, an independent analyst specialising in Taliban peace talks, said: "It sounds like an opening position because they know these are demands that will not be granted."
Nonetheless, it was remarkable that such senior insurgent leaders were allowed to move freely around Kabul to attend the meeting with Karzai.
Representatives of Mr Hekmatyar, who is blacklisted by the US and the United Nations as an international terrorist, have participated in informal talks before, including a meeting in the Maldives, but it is not thought Karzai has ever taken part in such discussions himself. Usually the president is represented by members of his national security council or by his brother Qayoum, a private citizen who plays a leading part in reconciliation policy.
Leading the delegation was Hekmatyar's deputy Qutbuddin Helal and it also included his son-in-law and former spokesman.
A spokesman for the movement said they had full authority to speak on behalf of Hekmatyar and they also planned to meet other important Afghan leaders, including former mujahideen leaders Abdul Rasul Sayyaf and Burhanuddin Rabbani, as well as foreign ambassadors.
A spokesman for the British embassy said he was not aware of such a meeting but that the UK backed peace talks as long as they were led by the Afghan government.
The development is likely to please the British government, which wants to see immediate steps towards a political settlement with insurgent leaders.
However, the US is demanding a more gradual approach in the hope that if the extra 30,000 troops sent to Afghanistan this year chalk up major battlefield successes then insurgent leaders will be willing to be more flexible in their demands.
Waldman said the latest entreaties from one of Afghanistan's most notorious warlords would further heighten divisions between the US and its main allies.
Hezb-i-Islami is allied to the Taliban and is dominant in the east of the country. Over the years it has claimed responsibility for some of the most deadly and spectacular attacks on Kabul, including a brazen attempt to assassinate Karzai during a military parade in 2008.
Although Hekmatyar has a reputation as an unbending radical Islamist, in recent months it has been rumoured that he is keen to strike a power-sharing peace deal with the government. Some analysts have suggested that the overture from Hekmatyar could indicate that Hezb-i-Islami's alliance with the Taliban movement led by Mullah Omar could be fraying.
Two weeks ago the two groups clashed in Baghlan province, leading large numbers of Hezb-i-Islami fighters to defect to the government.
Hekmatyar is one of the most controversial of the former mujahideen leaders who fought against the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and he served as prime minister of the country after the Moscow-backed government in Kabul finally fell in 1992.
Karzai has already moved to accommodate powerful members of Hezb-i-Islami, which operates legally as a party and is represented by MPs and provincial governors.
