U.S.,Taliban Talks "Very Preliminary"

Reuter reports:

It could be months before efforts to broker a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban bear fruit, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview aired on Sunday.

Gates, who steps down at the end of the month, said there had been contacts between United States and the Taliban in recent weeks, headed by the State Department.

"There's been outreach on the - on the part of a number of countries, including the United States. I would say that these contacts are very preliminary at this point," he told CNN.

The comments from the outgoing U.S. defense chief were aired a day after Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the United States was in contact with the Taliban, a striking public acknowledgment of a peace initiative that has been cloaked with secrecy.

Karzai said an Afghan push toward peace talks, after nearly a decade of war, had not yet reached a stage where the government and insurgents were meeting, but their representatives had been in touch.

"Peace talks are going on with the Taliban. The foreign military and especially the United States itself is going ahead with these negotiations," Karzai said in a speech in Kabul.