GHAZNI, Afghanistan: A NATO helicopter strike killed two children in southern Afghanistan yesterday, officials said.

The operation close to Ghazni city was conducted after local people complained of a Taleban post targeting traffic convoys in the area, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi, the deputy governor of Ghazni province, said.

Meanwhile, Afghan President Hamid Karzai traveled to Qatar yesterday to discuss Taleban militants opening an office in the Gulf state for peace talks that could end more than a decade of war.

Until earlier this year, Karzai was opposed to the militants having a meeting venue in Qatar as he feared that his government would be frozen out of any negotiations.

The militants refuse to have direct contact with Karzai, saying he is a puppet of the United States, which supported his rise to power after the military operation to oust the Taleban in 2001.

But, with NATO-led combat troops due to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, Karzai agreed to the proposed Taleban office in the Qatari capital Doha and is expected to firm up the plan with the emir of Qatar today.

Any future peace talks still face numerous hurdles before they begin, including confusion over who would represent the Taleban and Karzai’s insistence that his appointees are at the center of negotiations.

“We will discuss the peace process, of course, and the opening of an office for the Taleban in Qatar,” presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi told AFP before Karzai left Kabul.

“If we want to have talks to bring peace to Afghanistan, the main side must be the Afghan government’s representatives — the High Peace Council, which has members from all the country’s ethnic and political backgrounds,” Faizi added.

A statement from Karzai’s office said he was accompanied on the two-day state visit by Foreign Minister Zalmai Rassoul and Salahuddin Rabbani, chairman of the High Peace Council.

Negotiating with the Taleban regime that had harbored Al-Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks was for many years an anathema to countries fighting in the UN-backed coalition against the militants.

But the search for a political settlement became a priority as the insurgency raged on with Taleban leaders able to fuel the violence from safe havens across the border in Pakistan.

Kabul has repeatedly stressed that it would only start talks if the militants broke all links with Al-Qaeda and gave up violence, and Faizi said that any Taleban office in Qatar must be held to strict conditions.