"We have had representatives from the Taliban meeting with different bodies of Afghan government for a long time," Karzai told a news conference in Kabul. "I have had some Taliban coming to speak to me as well," he said.

Karzai did not disclose any details of these meetings, or indicate if they included talks with senior militant leaders.

Hundreds of former members of the once-ruling hardline Taliban regime have reconciled with the government since they were ousted from power in the US-led invasion in 2001.

But senior rebels leaders have refused to hold talks, and thousands more fighters have picked up guns and joined a bloody insurgency, particularly in the country's south and east, which last year alone left some 4,000 people, mainly militants, dead.

Karzai urged Taliban who were Afghans to lay down the weapons and join his government, but ruled out any deals with foreign militants.

"Afghan Taliban are always welcome, they belong to this country ... they are the sons of this soil," Karzai said. "As they repent, as they regret, as they want to come back to their own country, they are welcome."

But the foreign militants an apparent reference to militants from neighbouring countries such as Pakistan "should be destroyed," he said.

"They are destroying our lives, killing our people, they are not welcome and there will be no talks with them, " Karzai said.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber detonated a taxi filled with explosives near Afghanistan's parliament in the capital Kabul yesterday, killing six people including a policeman, police said.

The powerful blast was the third suicide attack in the heavily-secured city this year amid a raging insurgency by the fundamentalist Taliban militia, which was ousted by US-led forces in late 2001.

The bomber struck a few hundred metres (yards) from the national parliament building, Kabul criminal investigation police chief General Alishah Paktiawal told AFP.

"It was a suicide bombing. The bomber was driving a yellow and white taxi. Three civilians and a policeman were killed on the spot while two other people died later in hospital," he said.

He did not have any details on the two who died later.

Paktiawal said it was unclear if the bomber was targeting the parliament building. "It may have detonated prematurely. An investigation is under way," he said.