An Afghan street vendor fries fish with spicy seasonings Saturday at a market in Herat, Afghanistan.

Kabul, Afghanistan ? Six years after the fall of the Taliban, the fighting in Afghanistan is growing more intense – but so is talk of peace.

President Hamid Karzai has signaled increased interest in negotiating with the Taliban, and the U.N. and NATO say a growing number of militants want out of the conflict.

With Taliban leaders demanding a pullout of foreign forces, and the U.S. rejecting all-inclusive negotiations, high-level talks to end the war remain a distant prospect. Still, there appears to be a sliver of hope for peace talks.

One analyst suggested talks with the Taliban could be a way to separate the militia from al-Qaida, like the U.S. has done in western Iraq where a new alliance with Sunni militants has splintered their relationship with al-Qaida.

“The climate for talks is more conducive than it ever has been,” Daan Everts, NATO’s ambassador to Afghanistan, said this week. “We’re going to look into this more systematically, although of course this is essentially an intra-Afghan issue.”

President Hamid Karzai reiterated his long-held willingness to engage the Taliban diplomatically. A Taliban spokesman originally signaled that the hardline militia might consider that. But the group’s leadership has since said the U.S. military and NATO must first leave the country and that a harsh brand of Islamic law must prevail in Afghanistan – conditions the West won’t accept.

The American military urges fighters to lay down their weapons and seek reconciliation. But the U.S. Embassy says Washington will not negotiate with terrorists.

“They have killed thousands of people, many of them in brutal and horrific ways,” said Christopher Dell, the embassy’s deputy head of mission. “So there is really no possibility of achieving any settlement with (the Taliban) on any terms other than them giving up the armed struggle … and accepting the government.”

The country is on course for its bloodiest year since the Taliban’s ouster in late 2001. Of 4,300 people killed in insurgency-related violence in 2007, more than 3,100 were militants, according to an Associated Press count based on official figures.

The U.N. says a growing number of fighters are seeking a way out of the carnage.

“In the last six months, we as the United Nations have had more contacts from the opposition than ever before. I would not say it is dramatic, but it is a trend,” said Chris Alexander, the deputy head of the U.N. mission in Afghanistan.

“They are in many cases tired of fighting, eager to live in their country with their families and be out of danger but not sure how to approach the powers that be to make that happen,” he said.

Shutting the doors completely to the Taliban could just delay reconciliation, Alexander said.

Mullah Abdul Hakim, a former Taliban commander from the southern province of Uruzgan, joined the country’s reconciliation process two months ago, telling AP that he had been thinking “God likes peace, and from both sides, innocent people were dying.”

“Now I’m working to bring more than 200 Taliban to take part in the reconciliation process,” he said.

Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, said the strategy behind talks with the Taliban would be to splinter the militia’s relationship with al-Qaida.

“If that can be achieved, it’s similar to what’s happening in Iraq,” he said. “It’s possible the Americans are backing this because they’ve separated the Iraqi resistance force from al-Qaida, and it’s possible they have a similar goal here.”