Britain said Monday it was not "engaged" with the Taliban, after a report that relations between London and Kabul have soured due to a secret British plan to train former Taliban fighters.
In a report from the Afghan capital, the Financial Times said senior figures in President Hamid Karzai's government were furious at the proposal to set up a military training camp for 2,000 Taliban militants who wanted to switch sides.
Documents detailing the plan were allegedly unearthed when two diplomats, one from the United Nations and another from the European Union, were detained in southern Afghanistan in December last year and later expelled.
Asked about the report, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's spokesman Michael Ellam said only: "We are working very closely with the Afghan government in relation to the training of security forces in Afghanistan."
"I think we have always made clear that should anyone in Afghanistan want to join the mainstream Afghan security forces, then they will receive the same degree (and) level of training that is appropriate for the Afghan army."
"We are not engaged with the Taliban. We want to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan," added Ellam, repeating Brown's position that he set out to parliament in December.
"But if there are local militia who want to join the mainstream Afghan security forces then I think that's something that the Afghan government have said themselves that they welcome." Most of Britain's 7,800-strong troops are based in southern Afghanistan, where they have faced fierce resistance from Taliban militants, leading to calls in some quarters that negotiations may be a way towards reconciliation.
The Financial Times said the fall-out from the discovery was behind Karzai's veto of British diplomat Paddy Ashdown's bid to become the United Nations' special envoy to Afghanistan.
"We have operational discussions about these security issues with the international community, so why did they keep this secret?" one senior Afghan official was quoted as saying. "What was their motive for not telling us?"