Rare Meeting Between Afghan Government, Taliban A Taliban emissary sat face-to-face this week with a senior Afghan government official responsible for peace talks in a rare high-level gathering between the bitter adversaries, an official said Saturday. The encounter at a peace and reconciliation conference in Kyoto, Japan, was a rare a positive sign in faltering attempts to find a peaceful end to the protracted conflict in Afghanistan. It also provided an unusual opportunity for Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government to sit down with its enemies - the Taliban and the Hezb-e-Islami insurgent group. Siddiq Mansour Ansari, a peace activist who was invited to attend the meeting this week at Kyoto's Doshisha University, said it was the third peace and reconciliation conference organized by the school but the first time the Taliban had sent an emissary. The Taliban's former planning minister, Qari Din Mohammed Hanif, took part in the conference "to explain the policies of the Islamic Emirate," Taliban spokesman Zabilullah Mujahed told The Associated Press by telephone. Taliban officials rarely travel abroad for public meetings, and Mujahed didn't say how Hanif, an ethnic Tajik from Afghanistan's northeastern Badakhshan province, made the trip to Japan. Although a senior member of the Taliban and a member of the movement's political committee, Hanif is not on any wanted list. FILE - In this May 25, 2012 file photo, Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks, in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Obama administration is considering a new gambit to restart peace talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The plan to send several Taliban detainees from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a prison in Afghanistan, could boost the credibility of Afghan President Hamid Karzai as he and U.S. officials try to draw the Taliban back to peace negotiations. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File) Close The Afghan government was represented by Mohammed Masoon Stanikzai, a senior member of the government's High Peace Council, which is responsible for talks with the insurgency. Ansari said the conference was not intended to find a peace settlement but to air ideas and differences. "In this third Doshisha conference all the parties presented their ideas and agendas but there were no concrete agreements," he said. Karzai and U.S. officials are trying to draw the Taliban back to negotiations toward a peace deal between the Afghan government and the Pashtun-based insurgency that would end a war that American commanders have said cannot be won with military power alone. The Taliban have refused to negotiate with the Karzai government, saying the U.S. holds effective control in Afghanistan. Hanif said peace talks with the United States in Qatar were suspended earlier this year after the U.S. reneged on a promise to release Afghans from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and allow them to go where they pleased, according to Ansari. In an attempt to restart the stalled peace talks, the Obama administration is considering sending several Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay to a prison in Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials told The Associated Press. It is meant to show more moderate elements of the Taliban insurgency that the U.S. is still interested in cutting a deal for peace. But Mujahed said the White House's proposal won't coax the Taliban back to the negotiating table.