Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that recent military offensives against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan had gained momentum but that a reconciliation effort proposed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai was unlikely in the near term to cause senior Taliban leaders to lay down their arms.  Such defections will not happen until senior insurgent leaders begin to "realize that the odds of success are no longer in their favor," Gates said in a joint news conference with the Afghan president.  Karzai has proposed a major conference this spring to begin the process of reconciliation with dissident ethnic and political leaders, including the Taliban…Although Gates seemed less sanguine than Karzai about the immediate prospects for reconciliation, he said that as U.S., Afghan and NATO forces pushed the Taliban out of havens in the south and east, it was likely that some Taliban leaders would feel pressure to switch allegiances and support the Afghan government. – Washington Post

Foreign Policy has produced a summary of recent high-profile Taliban arrests and deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan.