"I think the strategy is right but we need to put in a little more input, more forces required, and maybe we need to concentrate also on the long-term strategy. We are following a short-term military strategy only," the former general told Britain's Sky News television.

"The Taliban have done wicked things. But then we have to come to a solution.

"Military is never the ultimate solution. The military can buy you time, it can create an environment, but ultimately it is the political instrument which has to be used.

"I personally think that you need to establish a political dialogue and political dialogue with senior elements within the Taliban.

"Unfortunately, the Taliban or the senior elements in the Taliban, I don't think are open at the moment to any discussions or any negotiations with (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai.

"We need to have people, whether through a jirga or whether it is the president himself, to have access into the Taliban."

Musharraf said the Taliban's influence in Pakistan's Afghan border areas had strengthened since he resigned the presidency in August last year.

"There is a degree of instability that has come up because of this resurgence of Talibanisation activity in the settled districts of the frontier, especially Swat, but I am very sure as long as the armed forces of Pakistan stay and they are strong, Pakistan will remain stable," he said.

earlier related report
Taliban release video of captured US soldier The Taliban have released a video of a visibly-shaken captive US soldier who was snatched by the Islamist militants in Afghanistan late last month, officials and witnesses said Sunday.

In the 28-minute clip posted online at the weekend, the soldier, who went missing in Afghanistan on June 30, sits on the floor in traditional pale grey Afghan clothing and pleads for US troops to leave the war-torn nation.

The defense department in Washington on Sunday said the man was 23-year-old Bowe R. Bergdahl from Idaho.

A US military spokesman in Kabul had earlier confirmed that the man in the video was the same soldier who went missing from his base in southeastern Paktika province, and condemned the video as "propaganda."

The shaven-headed young man, who sports a fledgling beard and appears nervous and frightened, answers questions in English, occasionally choking back sobs as he tells his captors he is scared and wants to see his family.

"I was captured outside of the base camp. I was behind a patrol, lagging behind the patrol and I was captured," Bergdahl, who says the date is July 14, tells an unseen captor.

Questioned about the US-led invasion that toppled the hardline Taliban government in 2001, he replies: "Since I've been here and I've seen how these people live and function, we have indeed invaded an independent state."

Prompted to deliver a message to his compatriots, Bergdahl calls for foreign troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, where they are helping local forces quell a growing insurgency by the Islamist hard-liners.

"Please bring us home so we can be back where we belong and not over here wasting our time and our lives," the soldier says.

Eating food and drinking green tea as he sits in front of a table, Bergdahl says the Taliban insurgents are "really treating me like a guest," but becomes distraught and emotional when talking about his family.

"I'm afraid that I might never see them again and that I'll never be able to tell them that I love them again, I'll never be able to hug them," he says.

"I'm scared... scared about not being able to go home. It's very unnerving to be a prisoner," he adds.

A link to the clip was sent to AFP by Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed early Sunday, and has now been posted on a number of websites.

"The US military condemns the release of this video by rebels," a Kabul-based US military spokesman, who requested anonymity, told AFP.

"They're exploiting the soldier for their own propaganda. US and coalition forces are doing everything they can to recover the soldier and get him back unharmed. The Taliban are using it as a propaganda tool," he added.

A man claiming to be a local Taliban commander who gave his name as Bahram contacted an AFP reporter and said the kidnapped man had been taken across the border to Pakistan, where the Taliban are also waging an insurgency.

However, his claims were impossible to verify.

Hundreds of US soldiers and troops from other nations have been killed in Afghanistan battling the widening Taliban-led insurgency.

But the June 30 abduction is believed to be the first time militants have snatched an American soldier in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

A commander of the Taliban's Al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani faction on July 2 claimed the abduction.

The US Department of Defense said in its statement Sunday that Bergdahl -- who is a member of an infantry division based Fort Richardson, Alaska -- was officially declared "Missing-Captured" on July 3.

A spokesman told AFP in Washington that it was Bergdahl in the Internet video.

The Taliban are the main militant group behind an increasingly deadly insurgency which they launched shortly after they were toppled from government.

The violence has reached new heights in recent weeks as thousands of US, British and Afghan troops launched a major assault against the rebel strongholds in the south ahead of national elections next month.

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