Owais Ghani, who governs the North West Frontier Province and its adjoining tribal areas, is the most prominent figure to date to publicly advocate holding talks with militant commanders leading the insurgency against coalition forces in Afghanistan.
His thinking reflects that of the conservative hardcore of Pakistan's military hardliners who are accused by Western intelligence operatives of supporting the Afghan Taliban as a "hedging policy" to maintain influence in Afghanistan.
"They have to talk to Mullah Omar, certainly "“ not maybe, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Haqqani group," Mr Ghani told The Daily Telegraph in an interview in Peshawar.
"The solution, the bottom line, is that political stability will only come to Afghanistan when all political power groups, irrespective of the length of their beard, are given their just due share in the political dispensation in Afghanistan."
The governor's remarks are likely to cause controversy among Pakistan's allies in the US-led "war on terror" and at home where the ruling Pakistan's People's Party is opposed to the Taliban.
Mullah Omar went into hiding during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. British intelligence believes that he has his headquarters in Quetta in southwestern Pakistan.
In 2006, Mr Musharraf acknowledged that some retired Pakistani intelligence officials may still be involved in supporting their former Taliban protégés whom they worked with during the 1990s when Pakistan helped the movement sweep to power in Afghanistan.
Jalaluddin Haqqani is a veteran commander of the American-backed Afghan war against Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s, and developed links with Osama bin Laden during that period.
Haqqani has had close links with the CIA and Pakistani intelligence agencies, notably the military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The New York Times reported in July that the CIA had given the prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, evidence of the ISI's continued involvement with Haqqani, who is now leading militants against coalition forces in Afghanistan, along with evidence of ISI connections to a suicide bombing at the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed nearly 60 people on July 7.
The Hezb-e-Islami, the Mujahideen faction of the former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, was one of the groups which helped end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan but has had links with Pakistan since 1978.
But in the civil war that followed in the early 1990s, his group of fundamentalist Sunni Muslim Pashtuns clashed violently with other Mujahideen factions in the struggle for control of the Afghan capital, Kabul.
The Hezb-e-Islami was blamed for much of the terrible death and destruction of that period, which led many ordinary Afghans to welcome the emergence of the Taliban.
Some of his party members are part of the Afghan parliament and he is said to have taken part in back-channel negotiations with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai.
Mr Ghani said that all three militant commanders were in Afghanistan.
"They are a power group that has to be preserved to seek political solutions we would not destroy them because then you are contributing to further instability," he said.
He denied that Pakistan "wants the Taliban back".
He added: "No sir, we have no favourites in Afghanistan."
Mr Ghani said that West must accept that the "Mullah is a political reality".
However he denied that Pakistan is supporting them by pointing out that it had handed over key Taliban ground commanders operating in Helmand province where British forces are based.
Senior American commanders and policymakers are considering a shift in strategy in Afghanistan. The chairman of the US joint chief of staffs, Admiral Mike Mullen, recently said that failure there was possible and "time was running out".
Mr Ghani said: "You are headed for failure. I think Afghanistan is practically lost. It is compounding our problems."
The governor added that the West must hold talks with the Taliban as al-Qaeda was regrouping from Iraq to Afghanistan. Russia had begun to supply weapons to militants and that the Afghans were intolerant of foreigners on their soil and so were staging "a national uprising".
"To eliminate the Taliban you have to slaughter half the Afghan nation," said Mr Ghani.
President Karzai routinely renews his call for peace talks. Members of a cross-border Afghan-Pakistani tribal council agreed last year to pursue talks with the Taliban.
The initiative received initial encouragement from the Taliban but its leadership then set preconditions for the 50,000 US and Nato troops to be withdrawn and Islamic law to be restored to the country.
Washington rejects talks with the Taliban maintaining that America will not negotiate with "terrorists".
Mr Karzai and the United Nations have stipulated that a key condition for peace talks is that the Taliban must accept the constitution that was signed by Mr Karzai in 2004.
It is doubtful that the America's allies in Afghanistan-which is formed among ethnically distinct groups from the Pashtun Taliban, the Northern Alliance, would accept such talks.
Mr Ghani said that Mr Karzai "does not represent any power group "“ tribal, religious or political and therefore like the people in his government he is dependant on foreign power. He is therefore an obstacle to dialogue and peace."
He described Pakistan's military strategy as one of containment. "We are not looking for quick fixes. We want to hold it to a level where we can just tolerate it until Afghanistan settles down," said Mr Ghani.
When asked about allegations that Pakistan has used the Taliban to retain its influence in Afghanistan, Mr Ghani replied: "We could counter that by saying India uses the Northern Alliance."