EARLY last month, the American deputy secretary who led his country’s delegation to the US-Afghan bilateral commission meeting in Kabul said: “Afghan-led reconciliation is also central to the transition as the surest way to end violence and ensure lasting stability in Afghanistan and the region.”

Until recently, however, it seemed that apart from such lip service nothing was being done on the ground to move the process ahead.

Now there has been some movement. Secretary John Kerry had a telephonic conversation with President Karzai about the peace process on June 2. The press release from the Afghan president’s office provided no details of what Kerry said but the Afghan press reported that the conversation had gone on for hours.

Following up on this conversation Salahuddin Rabbani, chairman of the Afghan High Peace Council, said on June 5 that the council was “ready for direct talks” with the Taliban and that “ further consultations are going on with the political parties, civil societies and women to chalk out a strategy for talks”.

Our media has reported on the basis of a briefing from an Afghan official that the new US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, James Dobbins, told Karzai last month that the Afghan “Taliban are willing to talk to the Afghan High Peace Council” and that during his recent visit Dobbins also discussed this with Pakistani officials in Islamabad.

Karzai visited Qatar to attend a conference at which he berated the Americans for policies which he said contributed to the spread of terrorism rather than to its elimination. What was not equally publicised, however, was his meeting with the amir of Qatar and securing from him a commitment to “speed up the peace drive and pave the way for negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban”.

As I have noted in an earlier article, Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, while still awaiting congressional assent, has raised the possibility that the initial foundation for US-Taliban talks — the exchange of five Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo for the one American prisoner held by the Taliban — can be resurrected. The White House announced yesterday that the US will shortly begin talks with the Taliban in Qatar.

For the last year, Pakistan has been urging that President Karzai talk to his “loyal opposition” to work out a joint position and more recently to get an endorsement for the Peace Process Road Map to 2015 which Rabbani had presented to Pakistan late last year. If Rabbani is indeed building a consensus within Afghanistan, it would represent a major advance.

What one can hope is that Karzai in his conversations with the Americans and the amir has also conveyed his support for the proposal that even while Salahuddin Rabbani is building a consensus in Afghanistan on talks with the Taliban the Americans can work out the issue of prisoner release with the Taliban. They would work towards not only securing in exchange the American prisoner but also a public pledge from the Taliban to renounce ties with international terrorist groups.

Will the Taliban be willing to move ahead or are recent indications merely whistling in the wind? The Taliban’s 2013 offensive has been far stronger on the face of it than their offensives in past years. This has been interpreted as the Taliban being intent on a military victory. I, however, see it differently. The Taliban have not been able to bring any fresh territory under their control. Their suicide attacks, the most recent in the vicinity of Kabul airport, have by and large been handled successfully by Afghan security forces with only limited help from the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf).

It would seem that the ferocity of the offensive and more importantly the attack on admired aid organisations was the work of hardline Taliban opposed to the peace process and who believe that military victory is within sight.

Given the attacks’ relative lack of success, those Taliban who favour negotiations can well argue that the attacks have let the Afghan people see that the Afghan National Security Forces can cope with the Taliban onslaught and that by attacking the wrong aid organisations they have brought discredit to the movement. The Taliban are tired of the war. They recognise, as some of their statements have implied, that absent reconciliation the Isaf withdrawal will bring about the same civil war situation that devastated Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has accepted Karzai’s invitation to visit Kabul. This should happen soon. He will be meeting a leader who is ill-regarded because of his misrule and corruption among his family and cronies. Karzai is anxious, however, to preserve both his family’s fortunes and his place in history.

The prime minister must bear these elements in mind. The objective should be to convince Karzai that his nationalist credentials would be burnished if he built a consensus within Afghanistan for Afghan-owned and Afghan-led peace talks with the Taliban. Perhaps full reconciliation would not be achieved by the time his term ends in April 2014 but he would be recognised as a nationalist statesman for having the vision to start the process.

Pakistan, he should be told, would offer him full support and that in doing so Pakistan would have its own self-interest in mind. Such peace, Karzai knows is an essential prerequisite for the success of Pakistan’s own battle against terrorism and extremism.

Pakistan desperately wants to further reconciliation in Afghanistan and would use the influence it enjoys to ensure that the Afghan Taliban get a fair but not dominant share in power in Afghanistan. A Taliban-dominated Afghanistan is the last thing Pakistan would want if it wants to be able to control the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and other extremist parties.

Secretary Kerry's scheduled visit to Pakistan has been postponed. It is probable that it will still take place before the prime minister’s visit to Afghanistan. He too must be convinced that Pakistan’s interest in promoting reconciliation is genuine and does not have strings attached.

The writer is a foreign secretary.