Gates: US Ultimately Ready for Taliban Reconciliation

US defense secretary Robert Gates said his country would "ultimately" be prepared to reconcile with the Taliban movement to end the conflict in Afghanistan.

Gates on Thursday, however, ruled out any possible talks between the US and al-Qaeda fighters in the country. Speaking after the first day of NATO meetings in Budapest about the war in Afghanistan, Gates said any settlement with the Taliban would be on the Afghan government's terms and would require the group to subject itself to Kabul's rule.

"There has to be ultimately, and I'll underscore ultimately, reconciliation as part of a political outcome to this," he said. "That's ultimately the exit strategy for all of us."

Gates also said that reconciliation efforts could not include anyone belonging to al-Qaeda.

Gates's comments come as a draft US intelligence report on Thursday said the situation in Afghanistan is now at its worst since the US-led invasion. The almost completed National Intelligence Estimate said the country is in danger of a "downward spiral" into violence and chaos.

Moreover, the situation in Afghanistan is liable to get worse in 2009, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned.

"The trends across the board are not going in the right direction," Admiral Michael Mullen told reporters at a breakfast in Washington. "It will be tougher next year unless we get at all these challenges." The New York Times said the draft NIE casts doubts on the ability of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to stem the resurgence of the Taliban movement.

A spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence would not acknowledge the existence of such an NIE, while a US intelligence official said the assessment process was still in its early stages and "its conclusions are premature." US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she expected to be briefed soon on the assessment, which represents the consensus view of 16 US intelligence agencies.

"I would just cite that Afghanistan is a difficult place," Rice said. "It has made progress since 2001. We have all talked about new circumstances that have arisen there, and we are doing a review to see what more we can do." A US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the downbeat "tone and direction" was not unexpected. "We heard about this for several weeks, and were not surprised by the tone it conveyed -- that the situation in Afghanistan was getting worse, certainly not better, and that a lot more attention was needed to try to remedy what is going on," said the official.

The White House has already launched an urgent strategy review led by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, a deputy national security adviser and coordinator of the US war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For her part, Rice said the State Department is reviewing its operations, including those involving the Provincial Reconstruction Teams where civilian experts travel with military protection to remote parts of the country. "We are looking also at what we can do to be more supportive of the ministries that president Karzai has put up," she added.

General David McKiernan, the top US commander in Afghanistan, has asked for four more combat brigades and support forces -- as many as 20,000 additional US troops -- to beef up the 33,000-strong US occupation force battling an intensifying insurgency. But so far, the administration -- citing constraints imposed by the Iraq conflict -- has promised only one combat brigade by February.

The draft National Intelligence Estimate says a breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the Karzai government and by increasingly sophisticated insurgent attacks from safe havens in Pakistan, the New York Times said.

The Washington Post said the NIE describes "a Pakistan-based extremist network with three elements -- Pakistani extremists allied with Kashmiri militants; Afghan Taliban; and traditional tribal groups in western Pakistan that assist the other groups"."Al-Qaeda, composed largely of Arabs, and increasingly, Uzbeks, Chechens and other Central Asians, is described as sitting atop the structure, providing money and training to the others in exchange for sanctuary," it reported.

In Budapest, NATO nations struggled Thursday to agree new steps to combat opium production in Afghanistan by hunting down drug lords and laboratories in an effort to halt the flow of funds to Taliban militants. "I cannot say that all noses are pointing already in the same direction," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told reporters. "Discussion will be continued tomorrow (Friday) morning."