In particular the White House is desperately looking for someone to help them negotiate with Mullah Omar, apparently they don’t care that he sheltered Bin Laden before 9/11 and has a $10 million FBI bounty on his head.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — After 10 years of bloody battle in Afghanistan, the United States is trolling for Taliban officials to talk peace with before the July drawdown of American troops.

Washington’s special envoy, Marc Grossman, has a one-point agenda: to reconcile Afghanistan’s warring factions, say Western diplomats in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

But as Washington seeks negotiating partners, it has little knowledge of who among the Taliban has the clout to make talks worthwhile.

Grossman, therefore, is trying for access to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed Taliban leader, according to Imtiaz Gul, head of the Center for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital.

In a meeting earlier this month in Islamabad, Gul said Grossman told him that he was looking for “persons or groups who can provide us access to Mullah Omar, who can demonstrate their ability to approach Mullah Omar and get him on board, who can get through to Mullah Omar to open talks.”

Finding a genuine interlocutor is a slippery business.

Heavily sanctioned and largely ostracized during their rule, many members of the Taliban leadership are not known to U.S. officials.