Inducements to tempt fighters back into the government fold could include jobs, homes and cash said Qiyamuddin Kashaf, the spokesman for the High Peace Council.

The body was proposed by President Hamid Karzai to seek a negotiated end to a war now in its 10th year and endorsed by a jirga, or traditional gathering, earlier this year.

The 70-member council, Kashaf said, had settled on the mechanism it wishes to use as a road map for starting the negotiations with insurgents, focused on seeking an “honorable” way for militants to return to mainstream society.

“This honorable return involves position, house, salary and self-respect. They want concessions and we will give them,” he told a news conference, but declined to give further details.

“The High Peace Council is earnestly asking Afghanistan’s armed opposition and their leaders to give up violence and join the peace process,” Kashaf added, reading from the council’s first statement after days of deliberation.

Kashaf also urged Muslim countries to play its role. “The Muslim Afghan nation wants to bring peace to this country and is asking Islamic countries: ‘Help your brothers. It is the responsibility of the Muslim world to respond to this request of the Afghan nation,’“ he told reporters.

Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told reporters on Thursday that Pakistan supports an Afghan-led reconciliation process.

“We are working toward that end, and we will continue supporting in whatever way ... the government of Afghanistan wants us to help,” he said. “We will leave this issue here because it is better not to get into specifics at this stage.”

For years, both Karzai and Washington have demanded that any militants wanting to talk must first renounce violence, cut ties with Al-Qaeda and accept the new constitution — conditions repeatedly rejected by the Taleban.

Peace Council chief Burhanuddin Rabbani recently suggested that he might be willing to leave more room for maneuver saying the body was independent and willing to be flexible about preconditions for any discussions with the militants.

If Kashaf’s comments calls for a renunciation of violence are a sign the council plans to a stick to Karzai’s longstanding demands, it could complicate efforts to reach out to insurgents.

The Taleban have always pushed for the withdrawal of the nearly 150,000 foreign forces now in Afghanistan as their main condition for holding talks with Karzai’s government.

NATO and Afghan officials have confirmed preliminary contacts between Karzai’s government and the Taleban, although a spokesman for the insurgents has dismissed reports of negotiations as propaganda and rejected Karzai’s peace council.