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After hitting southern Afghanistan with tens of thousands of additional soldiers in an effort to weaken a resurgent Taliban, the NATO-led military alliance is considering a plan to end the war by entering power-sharing negotiations with Taliban leaders and former fighters.

The scenario of a negotiated peace and a joint government involving the Taliban, once considered unlikely and controversial, is gaining momentum ahead of a critical summit on Afghanistan in London on Thursday. Within a 24-hour period, senior figures in the Afghan government and the United Nations - and perhaps most startlingly, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan - all endorsed seeking some form of peace settlement with the Taliban, which has battled Western forces to a standstill in the war-torn southern provinces.

"As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting," U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, the senior NATO commander in the 42-nation Afghan mission, said in an interview with the Financial Times. "I believe that a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome. And it's the right outcome."

By saying that Taliban leaders could be included in a future Afghan government and suggesting that Afghans should "extend olive branches" to the insurgents, Gen. McChrystal has gone further than any previous U.S. commander.

Canada's position on talks with the Taliban has gradually evolved over the past four years, from complete rejection to the point where the Harper government now considers some kind of reconciliation necessary to lasting peace.

At a meeting in Istanbul yesterday ahead of the London conference, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told reporters that he wants to begin negotiations with the more moderate of the several groups usually classified as "Taliban."

"I will be making a statement at the conference in London to the effect of removing Taliban names from the United Nations sanctions list," he said.

Kai Eide, the UN Special Representative for Afghanistan, told The New York Times hours earlier that he wants to begin bringing the Taliban into talks on governing the country. "If you want relevant results, then you have to talk to the relevant person in authority," he said. "I think the time has come to do it."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is organizing the 60-nation summit, said yesterday that he agrees with this approach, saying it is "right to believe that over the long term we can split the Taliban."

According to briefings by British government and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials, the withdrawal of Canadian troops in June of 2011 is likely to coincide with a "negotiated peace" with moderate factions of the Taliban and a program to integrate former fighters into the Afghan National Army. The process could begin much sooner, however, with Taliban leaders being invited to a peace conference this spring, officials said.

There will be a "National Reintegration Organization" in Kabul designed to "reach out to insurgents who are prepared to work peacefully within the constitutional framework and have no links to terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda," according to a leaked draft of the summit communiqué. This idea has been mooted before in Afghanistan, but for the first time there will be sufficient international financing to put former Taliban fighters on the military or government payroll.

Canada's position, meanwhile, has come full circle. In 2006, Conservative politicians ridiculed NDP Leader Jack Layton when he called for peace talks with the Taliban. But in 2008, Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Canada would support talks between the Afghan government and Taliban elements who renounce violence and accept the national constitution.

Facilitating talks with insurgent elements is now one of the six official priorities of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, although Canada insists the talks be Afghan-led as a way of ensuring that Western countries do not do an end run around Mr. Karzai to try to strike a new national balance of power.

As a practical matter, Canadian officials say that a successful outcome to such talks is far from assured. Not least among the considerable difficulties will be determining which insurgent elements might be willing to compromise and build a lasting agreement.

Even as it discusses peace, the summit will attempt to add 5,000 NATO troops to the current force of 55,000 soldiers just weeks after U.S. President Barack Obama authorized the deployment of an additional 30,000 U.S. Marines in Afghanistan. The Marines will launch a major assault as early as this weekend in an effort to secure the south and prepare it for an eventual handover to the Afghan National Army.