Karzai told a delegation from the Council that his country needed to know how long the US-led "war on terror" was going to be fought in Afghanistan or it would be forced to seek a political solution to a Taliban-led insurgency.

"The international community should give us a timeline of how long or how far the war on terrorism will go," Karzai's chief spokesman Homayun Hamidzada cited the president as telling the meeting.

"If we don't have a clear idea of how long it will be, the Afghan government has no choice but to seek political solutions," he told AFP.