WASHINGTON: US officials recently held secret talks with the Haqqani network and this meeting had been set up by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the US media reported on Wednesday.

A key leader of this faction, Sirajuddin Haqqani, had earlier told the BBC that the US had approached him about joining the Afghan government.

The US State Department, when asked to comment on the reports, said any group which wanted to engage with the US in Afghanistan must give up violence and should be willing to work with the Afghan government.

“We insist, as do the Afghans, that anybody who is reconciled or who is pursuing reconciliation has to renounce violence,” said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland when asked to comment on the reported contact with the Haqqani group.

“They have to abandon their ties, cut their ties with Al Qaeda, they have to abide by the laws and the constitution of Afghanistan, including respecting the rights of women and ethnic minorities,” she added.

“Now, I'm not going to talk about any specifics and meetings and this and that. Within that umbrella this is an Afghan-led process,” said the US official when a journalist asked her to confirm or deny if Washington had held talks with the Haqqanis.

“I will say to you, again, what we've been saying for some two weeks very firmly with regard to the Haqqani network. Job one in our relationship with Pakistan is for us to work on the terror and the problem that they are posing to Pakistan, to the US, to Afghanistan,” she added.

“If a person had been or were a member of the Haqqani network but then renounced violence and met the criteria that you've had for now quite a long time, they might be able to be part of reconciliation?” asked a journalist. “Again, these are the Afghans' criteria, these are our criteria, but I'm not going to comment on any specific conversations that are going on under that umbrella. But those are the criteria that we require, yes, and the Afghans require,” said the US official.

Earlier Wednesday, the US media reported that American officials had secretly met leaders of the Haqqani network during this summer, despite their reservations about the group's link to Al Qaeda.

The meeting was part of an effort to draw the Haqqanis into talks on winding down the war, media reports said.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the talks, also noted that Washington had publicly scorned the group, blaming it for carrying out a series of recent attacks on the US Embassy and other US and Nato targets in Afghanistan. At a recent congressional testimony, former US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen went a step ahead and called the group “a veritable arm” of the ISI. The statement caused a major rupture in US-Pakistan ties, with some pundits predicting that it would lead to a final separation.

WSJ quoted Pakistani and US officials as saying that the push to draw the Haqqanis into talks had yielded little.

On reports that Pakistan too had announced plans to hold a dialogue for reconciliation with all militant factions, including Haqqani network, the State Department official said: “Our position on reconciliation is that if you're going to reconcile, you've got to meet these criteria.

“Our hope would be that those are the same criteria that would be expected in this instance. But if there's a chance to make those clearer, that's a good thing,” she added.

The US media noted that the behind-the-scenes American effort reflected the growing realisation that a military campaign alone won't bring the Haqqanis to heel and that compromises were needed to wind down US involvement in Afghanistan.

“We've got no illusions about what the Haqqanis ultimately are,” a senior US official told WSJ. But the “war is going to end with a deal. That's what we're trying to make inevitable. The more parties involved in talking, that's probably going to make for a better deal.”