(CNSNews.com) – The Afghan Taliban edged a little closer to international respectability this week with Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s announcement that his government would accept a Taliban liaison office in Qatar to facilitate peace talks with the fundamentalist militia.

Karzai’s agreement, which is contingent on Afghans rather than foreigners leading the talks, marks a shift from his earlier opposition to the U.S. proposal of an official Taliban presence in Qatar. Earlier this month, he recalled the Afghan ambassador from Doha after it was reported that the Gulf state had offered to host a Taliban office during discussions with U.S. and German officials.

“Recently it has been decided that a Taliban office in any Islamic country would be welcomed, but on the condition that they are opened in consultation with the Afghan government and the High Peace Council,” presidential spokesman Hamid Elmi said Tuesday.

The move comes three months after a Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace emissary assassinated Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former Afghan president who headed the High Peace Council, which was set up to oversee reconciliation efforts with the Taliban.

Around 1,860 American military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan over the past decade, most of them at the hands of the Taliban and allied groups. Other members of the NATO-led coalition deployed there have lost almost 1,000 more.

But as the U.S. and other coalition countries prepare to withdraw most combat troops by 2014, the push for some sort of negotiated settlement has picked up speed.

Reuters reported recently that U.S. officials had held 10 months of secret talks with Taliban representatives and that the Obama administration had been considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Afghan government custody. The tentative agreement reportedly broke down over opposition from Karzai.

Washington’s long-stated position is that it supports an Afghan government-led reconciliation process, on condition Taliban leaders pledge to stop fighting, end support for al-Qaeda, and abide by the Afghan constitution, including its guarantees of rights for women.

Vice President Joe Biden was quoted last week as telling Newsweek magazine in an interview that the Taliban “is not our enemy,” a remark that prompted criticism from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney but was backed up by the White House.

“Who are Taliban if not Enemies?,” the independent Daily Outlook Afghanistan asked in an editorial last weekend reacting to Biden’s comment.

“Backed by elements in the region, the Taliban militants, along with Hezb-e-Islami Hekmatyar and Haqqani network, have been involved in destruction of roads, bridges and schools built with international assistance, carrying out terrorist assaults to kill security forces and civilians alike,” it said.

The editorial concluded, “It should be mentioned that as long as the Taliban remain allied with terrorists and forces of evil in the region and beyond, they will pose threats to human life in Afghanistan and to security in the world by exercising violence in the country and by networking with terrorists regionally and globally.”

Whatever signal the administration may have intended to send with Biden’s remarks and the White House support for them, the Taliban has shown no sign of softening its belligerent rhetoric aimed at the U.S. and NATO.

Its media office continues to produce “news” items claiming military successes – many apparently fabricated or exaggerated – against foreign troops, who are described as “cowards,” “invaders” and “terrorists,” and against Afghan government forces who are derided as “minions” and “puppets”

A sampling of recent headlines includes, “Scores of cowardly minions killed in firefight,” “Powerful blast turns invaders’ tank into twisted metal; 6 American cowards killed” and “Puppet shot dead in Kandahar.”

In an essay this week marking the 32nd anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman predicted that the mujahideen would ensure that the U.S.-led coalition “face the same fate that befell the then Red Army who under the pretext of [1988] Peace Treaty of Geneva pulled out of Afghanistan in failure.”

“The current invaders are, too, looking for the pretense to withdrew from Afghanistan in a face-saving way and are in the point of fleeing,” he wrote.

Mullah Omar and the FBI list

Meanwhile, Pakistani media began reporting in recent days that the FBI has removed Taliban leader Mullah Omar from its list of most-wanted terrorists. The reports, which spread widely online, cited unnamed “sources” as saying the move was designed to pave the way for talks with the Taliban.

In fact, Omar has never been on the FBI’s list. He has featured – and remains – on the State Department-administered Rewards for Justice site, where a reward of up to $10 million is offered for information leading to his arrest of conviction.

“Mullah Omar’s Taliban regime in Afghanistan sheltered Osama bin-Laden and his al-Qai’da network in the years prior to the September 11 attacks,” it states. “Although Operation Enduring Freedom removed the Taliban regime from power, Mullah Omar remains at large and represents a continuing threat to America and her allies.”

The FBI’s most-wanted terrorist list was first released in the weeks following 9/11, and the original list comprised 22 names, with Omar not among them. Those named were mostly linked to al-Qaeda although the list included Hezbollah terrorists involved in the 1985 hijacking of a U.S. airliner and the killing of an American, Petty Officer Robert Stethem.

The FBI’s current list features 31 men, including Osama bin Laden’s successor at the helm of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri; Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud; al-Qaeda spokesman and American citizen Adam Yahiye Gadahn; and Jamal Ahmed Badawi, who escaped from a Yemeni prison in 2006 after being sentenced to death for his role in the Oct. 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden port and the killing of 17 American sailors.