Karzai making positive statements on peace process: US

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has made some ''very positive'' statements on peace talks with the Taliban, the US said.

"I don't think that's helpful. What we do want to emphasise is that he's now quite publicly speaking positively about the prospect for talks and about his government's willingness to try to get to a place where Afghans and Afghans are talking to each other," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland said.

Nuland's comments came after Karzai, in a statement, said that there have been three-way meetings between Taliban, US and Afghanistan officials. The Taliban, however, have denied it.

"As we said the last time we were on this topic, frankly, we don't think it's for us to get into the blow-by-blow of how we are trying to facilitate a process that gets to Afghans talking to Afghans about peace, reconciliation, and stability there. So I'm frankly not going to get into who met whom where and in what configuration," Nuland told reporters.

"What we did think was interesting about the press statements we saw from President Karzai is that he is again making very positive statements about the process, making clear that he and his government are prepared to be actively engaged and working with others on that," she said.

Karzai had said he was not going to give all the details because the folks trying to work this through need some space to see if the process can work, she said.

Nuland said the entire thing is in a very preliminary stage. "We're still at the stage of trying to build the trust among the Afghans so that they can sit in the room and have conversations.

"From our perspective, this preliminary effort to get the sides to meet directly and meet with each other continues. You're going to have lots of stray press comments from different factions, different groups, throughout this process. We all just need to be steady and take it one step at a time," Nuland added.