Kabul must step up Taliban re-integration: adviser

BERLIN (Reuters) - The Afghan government must step up efforts to convince members of the Taliban to abandon terrorism and side with the administration in Kabul if it is to restore stability to the country, a senior Afghan official said.

Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, the country's former foreign minister and a senior security adviser to President Hamid Karzai, told Reuters in an interview on Friday that "re-integration" of the Taliban was one of four key challenges facing the government.

Others included handing over more security responsibilities from international troops to Afghan forces, fostering economic and social development, and good governance.

"The first (thing) is how we can integrate the people at communal level in districts and provinces," Spanta said.

"The second is how we can encourage the middle leadership of the Taliban to come back home to be politically active," he added, noting that there was now international consensus on the matter.

Taliban fighters rocked Kabul with a bloody assault on Monday, hitting government buildings in the capital. Spanta was adamant that the attack could not have been launched without outside help, though he did not specify by whom.

"Do you think a countryside Afghan Taliban or Talib organization can logistically and militarily prepare an operation of this professionalism without having support from developed military or non-military organization?," he said.

The former minister was in Berlin as Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg hinted the German government may offer to raise its troop levels in Afghanistan at a high-level conference in London that begins on January 28.

United States President Barack Obama and NATO have pressed Germany to increase its military presence as western leaders seek to create a time plan for a withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Spanta, who will head the Afghan delegation to the talks, said it was not his government's intention to solicit more foreign troops, describing this debate as a separate discussion in which Kabul would not participate.

(Editing by Noah Barkin)