The Obama administration is in danger of missing an historic opportunity for a peace settlement in Afghanistan if it does not act quickly to release prisoners in response to a Taliban offer to open talks, European officials and observers claim.

Several diplomats stressed that the Taliban offer to enter talks was an historic step, representing a dramatic change in policy, and that for the first time since the war began all the parties were lined up behind official support for negotiations, but that such alignment might not last very long. Some speculated that the Obama administration had been rattled by Republican attacks on the president’s national security credentials. What was needed now, one diplomat said, was “political courage”.

Michael Semple, a former EU envoy to Afghanistan who is in close touch with senior Taliban members, said: “It’s an open question whether the Americans appreciate how momentous a step this was for the Taliban. It is serious and it is profound. It’s completely game-changing.”

“It is US policy to engage. But the people you’ve asked to engage are risking their lives and they need help and they need credibility with their own people. If you invite everybody to the party and don’t show up yourselves, my God you look stupid.”

Semple added that if both sides promptly implemented confidence-building measures like prisoner transfers, “it is realistic to think there could be a ceasefire in 2012”.

“Do they [the Obama administration] realise that they could actually stop the fighting in Afghanistan this year?” he asked.

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