MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan - Thirteen Afghan civilians died in violence as the nation's hard-line vice-president expressed hope for reconciliation and representatives of a militant group with ties to the Taliban brought a peace deal to the capital.
Talk of reconciling with insurgents has done little to slow fighting across Afghanistan, yet the issue is gaining steam, partly fueled by a "peace jirga" that Afghan President Hamid Karzai will host in late April or early May.
The Afghan government and others from the international community have had secret contacts with the Taliban or their representatives at the same time thousands of U.S. and NATO reinforcements stream into the country to slow the insurgency.
Helmand province in southern Afghanistan was the scene of Sunday's deadliest violence. A suicide bomber killed 10 civilians and wounded seven others when he detonated his explosives near an Afghan army patrol at a bridge in Gereshk.
In eastern Afghanistan, two civilians died when a roadside bomb exploded near a crowd celebrating the Afghan new year in Khost province. And in Wardak province, NATO said an elderly man was shot and killed by a joint Afghan-international force that mistakenly believed he was a threat.
Also, NATO said two rockets landed Sunday around the military complex at Kabul airport. A third landed nearby and a fourth hit in the eastern part of the capital. There were no initial reports of casualties.
Besides working on ways to reconcile with the Taliban's top leaders, the Afghan government is finalizing a plan to use economic incentives to coax low- and mid-level insurgent fighters off the battlefield. Pakistan, Iran and other international players, meanwhile, have begun staking out positions on possible reconciliation negotiations that could mean an endgame to the 8-year-old war.
Harun Zarghun, chief spokesman for Hizb-i-Islami, said a five-member delegation was in Kabul to meet with government officials and also plans to meet Taliban leaders somewhere in Afghanistan. The group, which has longtime ties to al-Qaida, was founded by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and rebel commander in the war against the Soviets in the 1980s.
Spokesmen for the Karzai government could not be reached for comment.
Khalid Farooqi, a member of the parliament from Paktika province, said one delegation from Hizb-i-Islami arrived 10 days ago, and a second one, including Qutbudin Halal, a powerful figure in the group, came on Saturday.
Zarghun, the group's spokesman in Pakistan, said the delegation is carrying a 15-point plan that calls for foreign forces to start pulling out in July -- a full year ahead of President Barack Obama's desire to start withdrawing U.S. forces in July 2011.
The plan also calls for the Afghan parliament to serve through December. After that, parliament would be replaced by an interim government, or shura, which would hold local and national elections within a year, according to the plan. Zarghun said a new Afghan constitution would be written, merging the current version with ones used earlier.
A spokesman for Hekmatyar, Wali Ullah, said Hizb-i-Islami has never refused to join in peace talks, under certain conditions. "The main condition is the empowerment of President Karzai to engage in talks and make decisions," he said. "The aggressive occupying forces should also announce a schedule for leaving Afghanistan."
Earlier this month, Hizb-i-Islami fighters battled the Taliban with rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine-guns in Baghlan province. It was not immediately clear whether the clashes were a localized militant dispute or represented signs of a rift between Hekmatyar and the Taliban. But dozens of Hizb-i-Islami fighters, under pressure from the Taliban, ended up joining government forces that had amassed on the edge of the battle zone.
In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif to mark the Afghan new year, hard-line Vice-President Mohammad Qasim Fahim expressed hope that the upcoming peace jirga will lay a foundation for peace with insurgents.
"The government will try to find a peaceful life for those Afghans who are unhappy," Fahim, who fought the Soviets and commanded forces that overthrew the Taliban in 2001, told thousands who flocked to a shrine.
