U.S. & World

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) ― Pakistani and Afghan leaders vowed Tuesday to seek dialogue with Taliban insurgents, saying the "door is now open" for reconciliation.

Also, in a major policy change, the United States is said to be considering talks with members of the Taliban in an effort to quell violence in the country, according to a report on the Wall Street Journal's Web site Tuesday.

In the news report, senior Bush administration officials are cited as saying that the proposed talks are mentioned in a draft recommendation in a classified White House assessment of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

The document apparently calls for the talks to be led by the Afghan central government, but with the active participation of the U.S., according to the WSJ report.

As for the vowed Afghan-Pakistani joint talks, former Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said both countries would talk only with those Taliban militants who "accept the constitutions of both nations," but did not explicitly say they must first disarm.

Another delegate to the two-day talks between political and tribal leaders in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad said that the offer was not open to Al Qaeda members blamed for some of the worst violence in both countries.

"We agreed that contacts should be established with the opposition," said Abdullah, the head of the Afghan delegation.

"Those who are willing to take this opportunity and come forward, the door is open," he said.

Neither Pakistani-based nor Afghan-based Taliban spokesmen were immediately available for comment.

He said the meeting, or "jirga," had formed committees to seek contacts with "all parties in this conflict." They would then report back to a meeting in two months with their findings, he said.

Violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan has risen steadily since U.S.-led forces drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001. Many militants fled to Pakistan's border regions, where they have established bases and struck back with increasing success.

The Afghan government is seeking talks with elements in the Taliban leadership in an effort at reconciliation and the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan said the two sides recently had contacts in Saudi Arabia.

Pakistani officials have also said they are prepared to talk with militants who give up arms.

Pressed on whether further talks would include those who kept their weapons, Pakistani delegate Ghazi Gulab Jamal, a former government minister, said only, "Dialogue means we are not fighting and when someone is not fighting, they are not holding weapons."

U.S. officials, who are preparing to reinforce their troops in Afghanistan, have played down the significance of the Afghan talks, but support the principle of reconciliation for those who give up violence.

Washington has been critical of past deals with militants close to the Afghan border in Pakistan, saying they gave the insurgents space and time to regroup and attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Tuesday's meeting of some 50 leaders in Islamabad, dubbed a mini-jirga, is a follow-up to a much larger "peace council" in Kabul last year which vowed to fight terrorism together.

The idea for the jirga process had been hatched almost a year earlier during a White House meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and then-Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)