By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Taliban fighters rejected overtures from Afghan President Hamid Karzai to abandon their insurgency and join a reconciliation process, while officials reported four more killings on Monday in Afghanistan's south and east.
"Jihad and resistance against the American occupiers and its mercenary government is the only way," Abdul Hai Mutmaen, the Taliban's chief spokesman, told Reuters.
"We have the will to fight and that will not decrease at all," he said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.
Karzai reiterated a call for the Islamist fighters to lay down arms and rejoin the mainstream during a government-sponsored conference on Saturday to promote national reconciliation.
The growing Afghan National Army is being supported by close to 30,000 troops from a U.S.-led force and NATO-led peacekeepers.
But this year has been one of the worst for violence in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted from power by U.S.-backed forces in late 2001, after they refused to surrender members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
So far in 2005, about 1,100 people have died, including more than 50 U.S. military personnel.
The unrelenting violence claims lives on an almost daily basis in provinces close to the border with Pakistan, and several policemen have been killed in the past few days.
On Monday, officials reported Taliban fighters had killed at least four more people in separate attacks in the south and east.
Two pro-government militiamen were killed by a roadside bomb in Kunar province, while another was killed by a bomb planted at his home in Kandahar on Sunday night and a policemen was killed in Helmand.
Another two other people, including a judge, were wounded by bombs planted at their homes in Kandahar.
(Additional reporting by Zahidullah Zahid in KUNAR)