KABUL, July 9: The Taliban have temporarily closed their office in Qatar, where it was hoped peace talks would begin with the US and Afghanistan, an insurgent official said on Tuesday, blaming “broken promises” for the move.

The office opened on June 18 as the first move towards a possible peace deal after 12 years of fighting, but it enraged Afghan President Hamid Karzai by styling itself as an unofficial embassy for a government-in-exile.

Karzai broke off bilateral security talks with the Americans and threatened to boycott any peace process altogether, as international pressure grows to end the insurgency before 100,000 US-led troops leave next year.

“We have temporarily closed the Qatar office due to broken promises,” a Pakistan-based Taliban official, who declined to be named, told AFP by telephone.

“We are not happy with the Americans, the Kabul government and all parties who have not been honest with us,” he said, giving no further details.

The latest setback came as Afghan officials said a Taliban-planted bomb in the western province of Herat killed 17 civilians, and an Afghan soldier shot dead a Slovakian soldier at Kandahar airfield.

The mounting obstacles to any future peace negotiations follow a New York Times report which said the US was seriously considering speeding up the withdrawal of its forces because of frustration with President Karzai.

US President Barack Obama is committed to ending the US military involvement in Afghanistan by the end of 2014, though his administration has been negotiating with Kabul about leaving behind a “residual force”.

The US relationship with Karzai, while never good and often volatile, deteriorated again last month in the dispute over the Taliban's office in Qatar.

No decision has been made on the pace of the US pullout or how many US troops to leave behind to fight Al Qaeda militants, but negotiating stances were hardening, the Times quoted officials as saying.—AFP