Afghanistan's Taliban remained utterly opposed to peace talks, its secretive leader said on Monday, reiterating they would never talk with what they called a corrupt, "puppet" administration while foreign troops remained.
In a long and rambling statement on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid, the one-eyed Mullah Mohammad Omar said the Taliban's enemies had "been defeated on the battlefield" and had resorted to spreading "misleading rumours" about talks.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has included eventual talks with the Taliban as part of a wider reintegration plan, but Afghan and U.S. officials have played down confused and unconfirmed reports about talks with high-level insurgents, saying any contacts so far have only been preliminary.
The Taliban have long said talk of peace negotiations was merely propaganda, saying they will never talk as long as there are foreign troops in Afghanistan.
"The cunning enemy which has occupied our country is trying, on the one hand, to expand its military operations ... and, on the other hand, wants to throw dust in the eyes of the people by spreading the rumours of negotiation," Mr. Omar said in the statement emailed to media.
Mr. Omar is believed to be in hiding in Pakistan.
Violence across Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in November 2001 for harbouring al-Qaeda.
Military and civilian casualties are at record levels despite the presence of about 150,000 foreign troops.
Insurgents have launched a string of attacks against foreign and Afghan targets in the past four days, many of them claimed by the Taliban, and the surge in violence will be a sobering message for NATO leaders who will stage a summit in Lisbon this week.
Many European NATO leaders are under pressure at home from an increasingly skeptical public to justify their continued commitment to the drawn-out and costly war.
Those thoughts will also likely weigh on President Barack Obama's mind when he reviews his Afghanistan war strategy in December. Mr. Obama has pledged to begin drawing down U.S. troops from July 2011, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai saying he wants Afghans to have total security responsibility by 2014.
At the same time, there is growing acceptance of the need for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
While stepping up their attacks, the Taliban have also been positioning themselves as an alternative future government. Mr. Omar described corruption in Afghanistan as "epic", pointing out that Afghanistan was ranked one of the most corrupt countries in the world by graft watchdog Transparency International.
"Hardships, starvations, poverty, homelessness, civilian casualties, various diseases, aberrations of the youth and cultural and social deviation in the name of democracy are touching its climax," Mr. Omar said.
"They are only hankering after filling their pockets with money and fleecing the masses," he said of Mr. Karzai's government.
Analysts say the Taliban have again begun to portray themselves as a legitimate political force, noting that their political rhetoric is more modified and more frequent.
At the same time, the Taliban have been talking up successes on the battlefield, particularly in the key southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, just as U.S. and NATO commanders have said they had managed to halt the insurgents' momentum.