Five Taliban Guantanamo detainees have agreed to be transferred to Qatar, a move that would meet a key demand of the insurgents and likely ease the path to peace talks, Afghan officials said Sunday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government has also dropped its opposition to the transfer as it seeks to boost reconciliation efforts, a spokesman for the president said.

The inmates told a visiting Afghan delegation they were willing to be transferred to the Middle East state, and it was now up to the United States whether they were freed, said Aimal Faizi, Karzai's spokesman.

Faizi told AFP that the Afghan national security council representatives met the prisoners at Guantanamo, and Kabul had also sought assurances about the conditions in which they would be transferred.

"Our responsibility was to make sure they would not be transferred as hostages," Faizi said. "We dont want Afghan nationals to be transferred handcuffed or as hostages," he added

Once in Qatar, the inmates would be reunited with their families, he said.

But the Pentagon said no decision had yet been made on a transfer.

"Any decision to transfer a detainee from Guantanamo would be undertaken in accordance with US law and in consultation with the Congress," spokesman Todd Breasseale told AFP.

The Taliban had demanded in talks with the US that the detainees be transferred to Qatar, where the Islamist hardliners plan to set up a political office, but Kabul initially raised strong objections to the proposal.

While the Afghan government backed the prisoners' release they said they should be transferred directly to Afghanistan. Analysts said the Taliban officials risked being detained if repatriated to Afghanistan.

But Faizi said Sunday that Kabul had shifted its position "for the sake of peace".

Around 20 Afghans, including five members of the former Taliban government that ruled Afghanistan from 1996-2001, are held in the US military detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Kabul is also worried about being sidelined in the negotiations towards possible peace between the Taliban and the US, prompting Washington to repeatedly reassure Afghan authorities they will be included in discussions.

The Taliban announced its plan to set up a Qatar office at the start of this year, in a move seen as a precursor to peace talks with Washington.

At the same time, the hardline Islamists demanded the release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

The US led an invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, ousting the hardline Taliban government, and about 130,000 US-led troops are still in the country.

Nearly 10 years since the first handful of detainees arrived at Guantanamo from Afghanistan, 778 terror suspects have passed through the prison.

The prison population has dropped over the years to some 170, but at a painfully slow pace due to complex legal and political wrangling over where to ship inmates known as the "worst of the worst."

US President Barack Obama declared within hours of taking office in January 2009 his intention to shut the camp within a year, but strong opposition in Congress means it remains open more than three years later.