A 20-member Afghan delegation will attend talks in Qatar on Sunday and Monday, Attaullah Ludin, deputy chief of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, told Reuters.
"The open discussions are based on peace in Afghanistan. There will be representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Taliban and some other organizations," Ludin said.
The meeting is part of a regional conference organized by the Pugwash Council, a global organization that promotes dialogue to resolve conflicts and won the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that an eight-strong Taliban delegation would attend a conference in Qatar this weekend organized by the Pugwash Council.
But, he added, its attendance "does not mean at all peace talks or negotiations.”
A senior Taliban official in Qatar, however, told Reuters that Afghan and Taliban officials would meet face to face.
He said he had attended high-level meetings addressing which Afghan officials, as well as some from Pakistan and other countries, the Taliban delegation would and would not directly meet with.
"It's top secret so far," he was quoted as saying by Reuters
The meetings will mark the first major sign of progress since Pakistan's army chief told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in February that senior Taliban figures were open to talks with Kabul.
Previous efforts to open lines of communication, including the establishment of a Taliban political office in Qatar in 2013 as part of a United States-sponsored push to promote talks, have led nowhere, Reuters reported.
It is unclear if the announcement of the peace talks will stem the willingness to keep fighting recently shown by the Taliban. Last week, Taliban fighters entered the outer districts of a northerly provincial capital, Kunduz.
