U.S. plans Taliban peace talks

WASHINGTON – The US plans a major push next week to jump-start peace talks with the Taliban, senior Obama administration officials said, amid the first concrete signs of progress toward a negotiated end to the 10-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The press comes amid the potentially embarrassing emergence of a video Wednesday that appears to show US troops urinating on Afghan insurgents’ corpses. Its authenticity hasn’t been confirmed.

The US special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Marc Grossman, will meet with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul to seek his approval to resume US negotiations with Taliban representatives over confidence-building measures aimed at laying the ground for direct Afghan-Taliban talks.