09:50/24:11:2010

KABUL, Afghanistan – The top commander in Afghanistan said Tuesday that he was not surprised by reports that an impostor was involved in peace talks with the Afghan government because there were long-held doubts about one of the alleged Taliban representatives.

In a setback to efforts to negotiate an end to the war, an Afghan close to the negotiations said the man, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who claimed to be one of highest ranking members of the Taliban council leading the insurgency, was a fraud.

Speaking to reporters in Berlin , Gen. David Petraeus said there had been skepticism all along regarding the identity of one man claiming to be a Taliban leader.

"It may well be that that skepticism was well-founded," Petraeus said.

President Hamid Karzai moved quickly to dampen the fallout from his alleged meeting with Mansour by denying the encounter ever took place.

He dismissed the reports, which first appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, as propaganda.

"I did not see Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour and Mullah Mansour did not come to Afghanistan . Don't accept this news from the foreign press regarding meetings with the elders of the Taliban because most of them are propaganda," Karzai said. An Afghan familiar with the reconciliation efforts, confirmed that a delegate claiming to be Mansour "was a fraud." He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize his contacts with both sides.

Mansour, a former civil aviation minister during Taliban rule, is a senior member of the Taliban's ruling council in the Pakistani city of Quetta . That council, or shura, is run by According to the reports, the impostor met with Afghan and NATO officials three times — including once with Karzai — before they discovered he was not Mansour. He was allegedly paid to attend. (AP)