Aghanistan's President Hamid Karzai plans to offer Taliban fighters money and jobs to persuade them to disarm. He will try to win support for his plan at an international conference next week, when he also hopes to attract more funding from Western donor countries.

The Taliban are known to recruit among Afghanistan's poor farm labourers, who can earn a better living with the Taliban than with Afghanistan's security forces.

Speaking to the BBC, President Karzai says his offer would only apply to Taliban members who are not ideologically opposed to the Afghan constitution. He ruled out members of al-Qaeda.

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates recently cast doubt on whether Taliban leaders would be willing to abandon violence in favour of political means, but conceded that lower-ranking fighters might.