The official says the alliance has helped secure passage of Taliban commanders to Kabul for high-level contacts with the government.  The official said it would be very difficult for Taliban leaders to travel safely to Kabul without NATO’s consent.

The NATO official,  who spoke in Brussels on the condition of anonymity, said the contacts mark a preliminary step toward reconciliation talks.

Meanwhile, the Taliban on Wednesday denied reports that its leaders were talking to the Afghan government about ending the insurgency.

Earlier this week, President Hamid Karzai said his government had been holding unofficial talks with the Taliban.

U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said the United States is not involved in the talks, but supports reconciliation efforts on condition that insurgents respect the Afghan constitution, renounce al-Qaida and lay down their weapons.

Six NATO service members were killed in Afghanistan Wednesday, in what already has been the deadliest year for coalition forces since the war began nine years ago.

The alliance says five troops were killed by roadside bombings in the south, and the sixth was killed by insurgents in eastern Afghanistan.

NATO commanders have warned of an increase in violence as Afghan and coalition forces go on the offensive against insurgents.  More than 30 NATO service members have been killed this month.

In Brussels Wednesday, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, spoke with NATO ministers about a plan to transfer security responsibilities to Afghan forces starting next year.

After the briefing, NATO’s civilian representative in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, told reporters that while the plan calls for completing the transition by 2014, it ultimately will depend on conditions on the ground.  Sedwill added that some allied troops likely will still remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

Separately, the U.N. Security Council renewed the mandate for NATO forces in Afghanistan for one more year, until October 13, 2011.  

The council also expressed concern about Taliban and al-Qaida violence and the increased number of civilian casualties.

In other violence Wednesday, Afghan and coalition forces say they killed a Haqqani network leader, Ansari Khan, in Khost province.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

Elsewhere on Saturday, NATO says Afghan and coalition forces who were pursuing a suspected insurgent have killed an Afghan adult male and a child. The coalition says another adult civilian was wounded.

The alliance says a patrol thought the suspected militant was about to fire a weapon when the shootings happened in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province.

A team of Afghan and coalition members is investigating the shootings.

NATO also says an air strike destroyed an insurgent compound in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province Saturday.

Alliance officials say they believe the compound contained more than 1,200 kilograms of explosives, enough to make 50 bombs.

NATO says Afghan and coalition forces captured a Taliban senior leader Saturday who was a bomb expert. NATO says the Taliban leader, who was apprehended in the village of Kesh-ano Kalachec in Kandahar district, was preparing a suicide attack.

Australia’s newly elected prime minister arrived in Afghanistan Saturday on her first foreign trip as leader. Julia Gillard met with President Hamid Karzai, reassuring him of Canberra’s intention to continue helping the Afghan government meet its security needs.

The Australian leader shared a meal with the Australian troops stationed at Tarin Kowt and paid tribute the 21 Australian troops who have died fighting insurgents in Afghanistan.

The prime minister also met with U.S. General David Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan. The two discussed plans for transferring the responsibility for security in Afghanistan to Afghan forces.

The Washington Post and The New York Times both published excerpts Wednesday of an upcoming book by Bob Woodward, an associate editor at the Post, who interviewed President Obama and his advisors on the war strategy.

The accounts say Mr. Obama was pushing for an “exit” and no long-term “nation-building” in Afghanistan, while top military commanders only offered options of sending in more U.S. troops to fight the Taliban insurgency.

The president eventually agreed to send an additional 30,000 troops to the country, but announced a deadline for U.S. forces to begin withdrawing in July of 2011.

The U.S. special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, was quoted as saying the new strategy will not work.

Excerpts from the book also highlight deep personal rifts between administration officials.

An unnamed senior administration official downplayed the division Wednesday, saying President Obama comes across in the war review as a leader who is analytical, strategic and decisive.

The Washington Post says the book also discloses that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has a 3,000-man paramilitary army made up of mostly Afghans.  The elite force is said to conduct sensitive, covert operations into Pakistan against al-Qaida and Taliban havens.

Another excerpt says U.S. intelligence reports show Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been diagnosed with manic depression.

Obama’s Wars is set to be released on Monday.

Woodward is best known for his work, along with journalist Carl Bernstein, uncovering the Watergate scandal that ultimately led to the resignation of former president Richard Nixon.

Threat one is the Taliban. The militant group said Thursday it plans to attack polling stations throughout the country and urged Afghans to boycott the September 18 elections. More than 10 million people are eligible to vote for some 2,500 candidates.

Insurgents have already killed at least three candidates and several campaign workers in the run-up to the vote.

Amnesty International said Thursday that female candidates are at particular risk.  It says some women have told the rights group that local security forces refuse to offer them protection or investigate incidents of violence.

More than a thousand of the planned 6,800 polling places will remain closed due to security fears, thereby disenfranchising many of Afghanistan’s voters.

More than 250,000 Afghan police and troops will be deployed to protect polling centers.  They will be backed by international troops.

Fazil Ahmad Manawi, the chief of Afghanistan’s Independent election Commission, said “Security is the first challenge, it’s also the second challenge and it will also be the third challenge.” He added, “If you ask me, the other problems are solvable”

Not so, says Afghanistan’s main opposition leader.  Abdullah Abdullah said “People are worried, people are concerned about the possibility of massive fraud and unfortunately, in spite of the experience that we all went through in the presidential elections, measures have not been taken in order to provide an opportunity for free and fair general elections. There are lots of shortcomings,”

That view is reinforced by Candace Rondeaux. She is a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group who is in Kabul. “There’s no doubt that there will be massive electoral fraud this time around,” she said.”We will definitely see a repeat of last year’s election fraud, perhaps even on a larger scale.”

The difficulty will be, however, because there will be so many candidates this time around and because the results are quite localized, that ultimately, it will hard to tell just how much fraud is taking place until several months from now.

Rondeax said “Last year, with the provincial council elections, there was massive fraud, of course, and it’s only just now, one year later, that we’re finding out about the real meaning of that fraud and how it affected certain candidates in certain areas of the country. So that will be really problematic and that will also cause some delays in finding out if this parliament is really, truly legitimate.”

And that, says analyst Rondeaux, will leave Afghanistan where many say it has been for decades, unable to move forward.

“Given the number of candidates who are backed by Mafia warlords, drug traffickers and other power brokers; it seems very unlikely that this new parliament, whenever it comes to fruition, will be able to confront the many challenges here in terms of corruption and insecurity. So that’s really unfortunate and it really, I think, ultimately affects the way Afghans view democracy and the democratic experiment,” she said.

Last year’s presidential election was marred by allegations of widespread fraud, with one-third of ballots cast for President Hamid Karzai thrown out.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told reporters that the balloting is just for the benefit of the foreigners who he says are occupying the country. And he urged the Afghan people to boycott the election.

Some 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament.

The Taliban’s threat to derail the election follows plans by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to open peace talks.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai called the creation of the High Peace Council a “significant step” in efforts to end a war that is nearing the end of its ninth year. The council is to include former members of the Taliban, leading Afghan civilians and women.

The council’s formation was approved by Afghan leaders and tribal elders in June. But so far the Taliban has shown little interest in any peace negotiations.

And Taliban attacks continue. NATO says two coalition soldiers have been killed in insurgent violence in southern Afghanistan.

One of them belonged to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The second was not identified.

A Japanese journalist, freelancer Kosuke Tsuneoka, who was reportedly detained by insurgents in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz several months ago has been released and is now at the Japanese embassy in Kabul. He is said to be in good condition.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told reporters that the balloting is just for the benefit of the foreigners who he says are occupying the country. And he urged the Afghan people to boycott the election.

Some 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament.

The Taliban’s threat to derail the election follows plans by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to open peace talks.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai called the creation of the High Peace Council a “significant step” in efforts to end a war that is nearing the end of its ninth year. The council is to include former members of the Taliban, leading Afghan civilians and women.

The council’s formation was approved by Afghan leaders and tribal elders in June. But so far the Taliban has shown little interest in any peace negotiations.

And Taliban attacks continue. NATO says two coalition soldiers have been killed in insurgent violence in southern Afghanistan.

One of them belonged to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The second was not identified.

A Japanese journalist, freelancer Kosuke Tsuneoka, who was reportedly detained by insurgents in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz several months ago has been released and is now at the Japanese embassy in Kabul. He is said to be in good condition.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, told reporters that the balloting is just for the benefit of the foreigners who he says are occupying the country. And he urged the Afghan people to boycott the election.

Some 2,500 candidates are competing for 249 seats in Afghanistan’s lower house of parliament.

The Taliban’s threat to derail the election follows plans by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to open peace talks.

On Saturday, Mr. Karzai called the creation of the High Peace Council a “significant step” in efforts to end a war that is nearing the end of its ninth year. The council is to include former members of the Taliban, leading Afghan civilians and women.

The council’s formation was approved by Afghan leaders and tribal elders in June. But so far the Taliban has shown little interest in any peace negotiations.

And Taliban attacks continue. NATO says two coalition soldiers have been killed in insurgent violence in southern Afghanistan.

One of them belonged to the 1st Battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. The second was not identified.

A Japanese journalist, freelancer Kosuke Tsuneoka, who was reportedly detained by insurgents in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz several months ago has been released and is now at the Japanese embassy in Kabul. He is said to be in good condition.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

The report quotes unnamed Afghan and U.S. officials as saying Afghan National Security Council official Mohammed Zia Salehi appears to have been receiving CIA money for many years.

It says it is not clear whether Salehi is being paid for information or to advance U.S. views inside the administration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, or both. There was no immediate comment from Salehi on the allegations.

The New York Times says Salehi’s alleged ties to the CIA reflect deep contradictions in U.S. policy on Afghanistan.  It says Washington is demanding that President Karzai root out government corruption while the CIA allegedly subsidizes the officials suspected of perpetrating it.

Afghan police arrested Salehi last month. They said a wiretap caught him soliciting a bribe in exchange for impeding a U.S. investigation of a company suspected of moving money for Afghan leaders, drug traffickers and insurgents. President Karzai intervened in the case, securing Salehi’s release after seven hours in prison.

In other developments, Afghan officials say insurgents killed eight Afghan policemen Thursday in raid on a police post in the northern city of Kunduz. They say one policeman survived the attack but was wounded.

Taliban militants traditionally based in southern and eastern Afghanistan have been increasing their attacks on Afghan and international forces in the country’s usually peaceful north.

Elsewhere, NATO says one of its reconnaissance drones crashed Thursday in the southern province of Kandahar after losing engine power. NATO says it recovered the drone but could not find the aircraft’s camera. It says residents reported that insurgents seized the device.

NATO says the camera had no recording capability and was used only to transmit images.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP.

Admiral Mullen says the flight gave him greater appreciation for the “degree of difficulty” Pakistani forces face as they battle insurgent groups and try to assert government control in areas where tribal leaders have reigned and insurgents have sometimes had free access.

Another U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Pakistani forces have cleared about 4,000 square kilometers of insurgents, about half of the area where the militants operated as recently as 16 months ago.

But the officer says the scope of the military operation is not as important as the civilian follow-up, designed to convince the local people to help the government keep the insurgents out in the future.  And the officer says while Pakistan has done more than anyone could have expected, there are still more things the United States would like the Pakistani forces to do, including targeting insurgent groups that attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan and conduct international terrorism.

Admiral Mullen says he often discusses that with Pakistani officials, particularly the U.S. desire for a crackdown on the group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is accused of carrying out the Mumbai attacks in India in 2008.

“I try to actually make the case, as I talk, that this is a growing threat,” he said. “It’s an organization that is becoming more lethal, proven so.  It’s not just operating where it used to be.  It’s expanding.  It’s in the West here [in Pakistan].  It’s in Afghanistan now.  It’s in other countries.  And I’ve seen this kind of expansion in other organizations, and I think we all have to be concerned about it.”

During a briefing with Pakistani and international reporters, Admiral Mullen stressed that the United States will not leave the region next July, when President Barack Obama has said he will begin to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.  Admiral Mullen said that process that will take years, and the United States’ “strategic partnership” with the region “will endure.”

He also expressed support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reintegration and reconciliation processes for insurgents and their leaders, saying that is how the conflict will truly end.  But the admiral said the Afghan government and its coalition supporters are far from being in a strong enough position to negotiate successfully with militant groups like the Haqqani Network. ” We need to be in a much stronger position to, in fact, get to a point where we reconcile with organizations like that,” he said.

Admiral Mullen said the final several thousand U.S. surge forces will be in Afghanistan soon, and he believes he will know much more by the end of the year about whether the strategy President Obama announced last December is creating that ‘stronger position.’   The admiral will travel to Afghanistan Sunday to personally assess the situation.

Admiral Mullen says the flight gave him greater appreciation for the “degree of difficulty” Pakistani forces face as they battle insurgent groups and try to assert government control in areas where tribal leaders have reigned and insurgents have sometimes had free access.

Another U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Pakistani forces have cleared about 4,000 square kilometers of insurgents, about half of the area where the militants operated as recently as 16 months ago.

But the officer says the scope of the military operation is not as important as the civilian follow-up, designed to convince the local people to help the government keep the insurgents out in the future.  And the officer says while Pakistan has done more than anyone could have expected, there are still more things the United States would like the Pakistani forces to do, including targeting insurgent groups that attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan and conduct international terrorism.

Admiral Mullen says he often discusses that with Pakistani officials, particularly the U.S. desire for a crackdown on the group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is accused of carrying out the Mumbai attacks in India in 2008.

“I try to actually make the case, as I talk, that this is a growing threat,” he said. “It’s an organization that is becoming more lethal, proven so.  It’s not just operating where it used to be.  It’s expanding.  It’s in the West here [in Pakistan].  It’s in Afghanistan now.  It’s in other countries.  And I’ve seen this kind of expansion in other organizations, and I think we all have to be concerned about it.”

During a briefing with Pakistani and international reporters, Admiral Mullen stressed that the United States will not leave the region next July, when President Barack Obama has said he will begin to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.  Admiral Mullen said that process that will take years, and the United States’ “strategic partnership” with the region “will endure.”

He also expressed support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reintegration and reconciliation processes for insurgents and their leaders, saying that is how the conflict will truly end.  But the admiral said the Afghan government and its coalition supporters are far from being in a strong enough position to negotiate successfully with militant groups like the Haqqani Network. ” We need to be in a much stronger position to, in fact, get to a point where we reconcile with organizations like that,” he said.

Admiral Mullen said the final several thousand U.S. surge forces will be in Afghanistan soon, and he believes he will know much more by the end of the year about whether the strategy President Obama announced last December is creating that ‘stronger position.’   The admiral will travel to Afghanistan Sunday to personally assess the situation.

Admiral Mullen says the flight gave him greater appreciation for the “degree of difficulty” Pakistani forces face as they battle insurgent groups and try to assert government control in areas where tribal leaders have reigned and insurgents have sometimes had free access.

Another U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Pakistani forces have cleared about 4,000 square kilometers of insurgents, about half of the area where the militants operated as recently as 16 months ago.

But the officer says the scope of the military operation is not as important as the civilian follow-up, designed to convince the local people to help the government keep the insurgents out in the future.  And the officer says while Pakistan has done more than anyone could have expected, there are still more things the United States would like the Pakistani forces to do, including targeting insurgent groups that attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan and conduct international terrorism.

Admiral Mullen says he often discusses that with Pakistani officials, particularly the U.S. desire for a crackdown on the group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is accused of carrying out the Mumbai attacks in India in 2008.

“I try to actually make the case, as I talk, that this is a growing threat,” he said. “It’s an organization that is becoming more lethal, proven so.  It’s not just operating where it used to be.  It’s expanding.  It’s in the West here [in Pakistan].  It’s in Afghanistan now.  It’s in other countries.  And I’ve seen this kind of expansion in other organizations, and I think we all have to be concerned about it.”

During a briefing with Pakistani and international reporters, Admiral Mullen stressed that the United States will not leave the region next July, when President Barack Obama has said he will begin to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan.  Admiral Mullen said that process that will take years, and the United States’ “strategic partnership” with the region “will endure.”

He also expressed support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s reintegration and reconciliation processes for insurgents and their leaders, saying that is how the conflict will truly end.  But the admiral said the Afghan government and its coalition supporters are far from being in a strong enough position to negotiate successfully with militant groups like the Haqqani Network. ” We need to be in a much stronger position to, in fact, get to a point where we reconcile with organizations like that,” he said.

Admiral Mullen said the final several thousand U.S. surge forces will be in Afghanistan soon, and he believes he will know much more by the end of the year about whether the strategy President Obama announced last December is creating that ‘stronger position.’   The admiral will travel to Afghanistan Sunday to personally assess the situation.

Security forces were deployed throughout Kabul Monday, as top officials from more than 60 countries and international groups, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, gather in the Afghan capital for Tuesday’s conference.

Afghan officials say the government will outline its commitments to improving governance, economic and social development and the rule of law, while seeking greater control of billions of dollars of international aid that flows into the country.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is hosting the summit, is also expected to lay out a timeframe for Afghan police and military to take responsibility for the country’s security.

Before departing for the conference Monday, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called for the transfer of security responsibilities to Afghan forces by 2014. Afghan officials are also expected to lay out details of a government program aimed at re-integrating Taliban fighters who agree to lay down their weapons.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.