Karzai confirms 'direct' US-Taliban talks

"... Karzai's comments, made in a speech filled with criticism of the U.S., came hours before a suicide attack on a police station in central Kabul that killed at least nine people and injured 10 others just a few hundred yards from Karzai's heavily fortified palace.
The U.S. hasn't publicly acknowledged the talks, and some U.S. officials privately question whether the initiative, portrayed as exploratory discussions, will bear fruit.
There have been at least three meetings between a senior U.S. diplomat and Tayyeb Agha, a former senior aide to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the last one recently held in Germany under German auspices.
The discussions so far have made no apparent progress toward kick-starting talks on a political settlement of the war. Some U.S. officials are pessimistic they will, in part because they don't know how much clout Agha still retains with Omar and his leadership council, based in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta... ...
But some U.S. officials in Washington and Afghanistan are concerned that violence is getting worse and that security conditions are too fragile to allow for the "significant" troop drawdown that lawmakers and Obama's aides want."