KABUL, Afghanistan • On the face of it, President Hamid Karzai has every motive to do all he can to bring about talks with the Taliban. Instead, the Afghan leader is emerging as a prime impediment to urgent U.S. efforts to jump-start negotiations with the insurgents.

Since the start of his second term in office, Karzai has repeatedly declared that his top priority is finding a political settlement to the bloody Afghan conflict and bringing the "disaffected brothers" back into the social and political fold.

Karzai's self-interest is at stake. NATO's military clock is ticking down, accelerated by the United States' recently announced push to wind down its combat role next year. And without Western backing, the Afghan leader is well aware that his own survival — political, and perhaps literal — could be in doubt.

Yet Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused American effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, launching a series of actions that appear to be almost deliberate provocations aimed at the United States, diplomats, analysts and observers say.

Before the Taliban movement last month announced its intention to open an office in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar to facilitate an "understanding" with the U.S.-led coalition, Karzai had worked assiduously behind the scenes to scuttle any such contacts. He loudly objected to the prospective locale, and recalled Afghanistan's ambassador to Qatar, complaining that his administration had been left out of the loop in key discussions.

Under heavy U.S. pressure, Karzai grudgingly agreed to the Qatar arrangement. But within weeks, presidential aides disclosed that the Afghan leader was seeking to set up parallel meetings with the insurgents, in Saudi Arabia. The Taliban issued an unusually specific denial that it intended to talk in Saudi Arabia with the Karzai government, which it routinely mocks as a "puppet regime."

Last week, Karzai enlisted the support of visiting Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who declared at a news conference that Pakistan would support an Afghan-led peace process, an implicit warning against too much U.S. control over the direction of the prospective talks in Qatar.

The moves leave the United States and its allies in the awkward position.