By Agencies

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The US defence secretary has cautioned against over-optimism in Afghanistan, despite recent gains on the battlefield for international forces there, warning of more "dark days" ahead.

Robert Gates made his comments during a visit to Afghanistan on Monday, his first since Barack Obama, the US president, ordered an increase of 30,000 troops US troops to Afghanistan.

"There is still much fighting ahead, and there will assuredly be some dark days. But looking forward there are grounds for optimism," Gates said at a joint news conference with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president.

For his part Karzai, said that a plan to reintegrate low-to mid-level Taliban fighters into society by encouraging them to abandon the Taliban with jobs and money.

The plan, which could also see the government negotiate with the Taliban's top echelon, will be crafted at a peace conference next month, he said.

Karzai has already extended the government's offer to members of the Taliban who renounce ties to al-Qaeda and agree to embrace the Afghan constitution.

Gates said that he supported Karzai's efforts to promote reconciliation but added that a peace deal would likely only come when armed groups understood that the odds "are no longer in their favour".

Gunbattle in Khost

Gates and Karzai's words come against a backdrop of continuing violence in Afghanistan.

In the eastern city of Khost, would-be suicide bombers dressed in burqas and armed with rifles tried to storm an Afghan government-owned building.

The fighters opened fire on Afghan and US troops in a police compound next door, a local police officer said, reportedly injuring some of the US soldiers.

"There were some casualties among the US soldiers which were air-lifted by a helicopter," Samkeen Ahmad, the police officer, was reported by the Reuters news agency as saying.

The fighters were later killed in a shoot-out with police.

"Police surrounded the house and shot both attackers - one of them detonated explosives strapped to his body during the attack and wounded four policemen," the AFP news agency reported General Mohammad Asrar, an army official, as saying.

Over the weekend, fighting broke out in Baghlan province between the Taliban and fighters from Hezb-i-Islami, a group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an ethnic Pashtun leader.

Laal Mohammad Ahmadzai, a regional police spokesman, said that 11 Hezb-i-Islami commanders and 68 of their men had defected to the government over the attacks.

Over 60 people, among them civilians, were reportedly killed in the two days of clashes.

Military briefing

Washington and its allies are struggling to maintain support at home for the war in Afghanistan, amid rising casualties and costs.

Obama has said US forces will begin to draw down in July 2011, although officials stress a military role will
continue.

While on his visit to Afghanistan, Gates was briefed by Karzai and General Stanley McChrystal, the US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, on the Marjah operation that began in February and is billed as the biggest since the 2001 US-led invasion.

He also sought details from McChrystal about his next target: restoring control over Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home.

McChrystal told reporters troops would mass gradually in Kandahar over the next few months to reassert full control but he said he does not plan an abrupt assault like the one on Marjah.

"Militarily it will not look much like Marjah," McChrystal said.

"There won't be a 'D-Day' that is climactic. It will be a rising tide of security as it comes. Slightly ahead of that there needs to be a lot of preparatory work in terms of governance."