Afghan President Hamid Karzai, right, delivers a speech at the opening of the second year of the Afghanistan parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Karzai announced to parliament on Saturday that he has taken the lead in peace negotiations with the Hizb-i-Islami insurgent faction, meeting personally with radical Islamist militia representatives to push ahead with the peace process.(AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, right, delivers a speech at the opening of the second year of the Afghanistan parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Karzai announced to parliament on Saturday that he has taken the lead in peace negotiations with the Hizb-i-Islami insurgent faction, meeting personally with radical Islamist militia representatives to push ahead with the peace process.(AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Afghan President Hamid Karzai listens to Afghan national anthem ahead of inspecting the guards of honor during the opening ceremony of the second year of the Afghanistan parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Karzai announced to parliament on Saturday that he has taken the lead in peace negotiations with the Hizb-i-Islami insurgent faction, meeting personally with radical Islamist militia representatives to push ahead with the peace process. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, salutes to Afghan parliament members, as he walks out of parliament after delivering his speech at the opening ceremony of the second year of the Afghanistan parliament in Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012. Karzai announced to parliament on Saturday that he has taken the lead in peace negotiations with the Hizb-i-Islami insurgent faction, meeting personally with radical Islamist militia representatives to push ahead with the peace process. (AP Photo/Musadeq Sadeq)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said Saturday that he personally held peace talks recently with the insurgent faction Hizb-i-Islami, appearing to assert his own role in a U.S.-led bid for negotiations to end the country's decade-long war.
Karzai made the announcement hours before he met with American special representative Marc Grossman to discuss progress and plans for bringing the Taliban insurgency into formal talks for the first time.
"Recently, we met with a delegation from Hizb-i-Islami ... and had negotiations," Karzai told a meeting of the Afghan parliament. "We are hopeful that these negotiations for peace continue and we will have good results," he added.
Karzai's statement was a reminder that any negotiations to end Afghanistan's war will be more complex than just talking to the Taliban's Pakistan-based leadership, headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar. The two other main insurgent factions in the country have their own leaders and agendas.
Hizb-i-Islami is a radical Islamist militia that controls territory in Afghanistan's northeast and launches attacks against U.S. forces from Pakistan. Its leader, powerful warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is a former U.S. ally now listed as a terrorist by Washington.
Based over the Pakistan border, Hekmatyar has ties to al-Qaida and has launched deadly attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Fighters loyal to Hekmatyar also have strongholds in Baghlan, Kunduz and Kunar provinces in the north and northeast Afghanistan.
The other main insurgent group is the feared Haqqani network, which maintains close ties to both al-Qaida and the Taliban and commands the loyalties of an estimated 10,000 fighters. The Haqqanis have been blamed for a series of spectacular attacks, including suicide bombings inside Kabul.
By showing he can bring at least one major faction to the negotiating table, Karzai may hope to boost his standing in a tentative peace process that has recently been dominated by Washington. The president has met before with representatives of Hekmatyar, whose political allies hold seats in the Afghan parliament and Cabinet, but Saturday's public announcement seemed intended to bolster Karzai's insistence on inclusion in the U.S.-led peace process.
"It should be mentioned that the Afghan nation is the owner of the peace process and negotiations," Karzai said. "No foreign country or organization can prevent (Afghans) from exercising this right."
The U.S. has repeatedly said that formal negotiations must be Afghan-led, but Karzai is reportedly uneasy with his government not being directly involved in recent preliminary talks with Taliban representatives.
U.S. representative Grossman was meeting with Karzai on Sunday, the U.S. Embassy said. Grossman stressed that any future negotiations would include Afghanistan's government, and said he would meet Karzai on Saturday.
"After our meeting with President Karzai, we will decide what to do next because we take his guidance and advice in an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led process," Grossman said Friday during a stop in India.
French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet also arrived in Kabul on Saturday for talks with Afghan officials after Paris suspended training missions following the killing of four French troops by an Afghan soldier, the latest in a rising number of assaults in which Afghan security forces or infiltrators have turned their guns on coalition forces.
Longuet said on arrival that there is "no possible partnership" in Afghanistan without "trust."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan early over the deaths, a potential setback for the U.S.-led coalition's efforts to build a national army and allow foreign troops to go home.
On Saturday, insurgents killed a NATO service member in southern Afghanistan, the coalition said. The statement gave no other details, nor the nationality of the casualty.
The attack comes a day after an Afghan soldier opened fire on French troops during a training exercise, killing four of them and prompting France to suspend its training programs.
Insurgents clashed Saturday with government forces in the town of Barmal in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, said Maj. Abdul Rahman, who coordinates coalition and Afghan operations in the area.
The Paktika governor's office said four attackers were trying to enter the town's main bazaar and then move toward government offices and military bases nearby. Before they could, Afghan security forces engaged them in a one-hour gun battle and all four attackers were killed, it said.
Separately, a roadside bomb killed four Afghan civilians Saturday morning in Helmand province in the south, the Interior Ministry said.
On Friday, insurgents killed five border police in the Gulran district of Herat province near the Iranian border in western Afghanistan, said Sulaiman Khan, commander of a border police rapid reaction unit in the area.
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