KABUL, Oct 8, 2008 (AFP) - Former Taliban leaders said Wednesday they shared a meal with President Hamid Karzai's brother and other government officials in Saudi Arabia last month but stressed the meeting did not amount to peace talks.

The disclosure came after media reports citing various officials that Afghan government leaders met Taliban insurgents in Mecca last month for negotiations to end a rebel insurgency crippling Afghanistan.

Former Taliban ambassador to Islamabad, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, told AFP he had attended the dinner but denied any negotiations had taken place.

'The recent flood of media reports about talks between Taliban and the Karzai administration in Saudi are all and totally baseless and untrue,' said Zaeef, a one-time close aide to fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

'As far as I'm aware such talks have not taken place nor have I represented anyone in those talks as it has been reported,' he said.

Zaeef confirmed however that among those at the dinner was the president's elder brother, Qayoum Karzai, a parliamentarian and businessman who divides his time between Afghanistan and the United States.

'That was a routine dinner hosted by the Saudi king,' he said, adding that 15 Afghans were present, about half a dozen them former Taliban.

Their exchanges with King Abdullah had amounted to only pleasantries, he said.

Zaeef was arrested soon after the 1996-2001 Taliban regime was driven from government and spent several years in the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay before being released about two years ago.

He lives in Kabul and says he has distanced himself from the Taliban movement behind an insurgency against Karzai's government.

A former Taliban-era foreign minister, Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, told AFP he had also attended the dinner and said 'it had nothing to do with talks.'

Mutawakil also spent time in Guantanamo Bay and has since reconciled with the new government.

Government officials and the Taliban have also denied talks aimed at ending the insurgency which was launched after the militia's ouster from government in a 2001 US-led invasion.

President Karzai has however called Taliban, including Mullah Omar, to the negotiating table to end the violence on condition they accept his government's constitution and are not involved with Al-Qaeda.

Karzai told reporters last week that Afghan envoys had made repeated trips to Saudi Arabia and to neighbouring Pakistan to try to set up negotiations but that nothing had been finalised.