KABUL, June 18: Afghanistan will send a team to Qatar for peace talks with the Taliban, President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday, as the US-led Nato coalition launched the final phase of the 12-year war with the last round of security transfers to Afghan forces.

“Afghanistan’s High Peace Council will travel to Qatar to discuss peace talks with the Taliban,” Mr Karzai said in Kabul, referring to the council he formed in late 2010.

“We hope that our brothers the Taliban also understand that the process will move to our country soon,” he said. Mr Karzai was speaking following a ceremony in which the international coalition marked the beginning of the end of the handover of security to Afghan forces. About 2,000 people, including Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and dozens of western ambassadors, attended the ceremony.

An explosion in Kabul early on Tuesday that targeted a senior member of the peace council illustrated concerns over how effectively the 352,000-strong Afghan security forces will be able to fight the growing insurgency after most foreign combat troops depart by the end of next year.

Mohammad Mohaqiq, a prominent Hazara politician, escaped unscathed from the attack but three people were killed and 21 wounded, a government official said.

Dubbed “milestone 2013” by Nato, the handover will culminate in the departure of all Nato troops serving in Afghanistan under the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) at the end of 2014.

Afghan security forces have been rapidly built up by the international coalition, from about 40,000 in 2009 to 352,000 in February this year.

The transfer of security responsibility began in July 2011 with a handover by Isaf of the country’s most peaceful province, Bamiyan.

There have been three further rounds since, taking to 87 per cent by last December the proportion of the Afghan population protected by the Afghan state. Tuesday’s tranche comprised restive eastern and south-eastern provinces bordering Pakistan. These include Helmand, Kandahar, Paktika, Paktia, Khost, Nangarhar, Kunar, Laghman, Logar and Nuristan. —Reuters