Kabul, Afghanistan ? While the war of words winds down between U.S. officials and President Hamid Karzai, preparations are going on for a “peace jirga” that could help end the real war.

On May 2-4, the Afghan government will invite 1,200 to 1,400 people to Kabul, including elders from every provincial district, along with parliament members, women, and members of civil society, to discuss a framework for peace.

Major Taliban leaders aren’t invited, but the conference will consider how to reconcile with them in the future. What no one can predict is whether Karzai is capable of using the jirga to pressure Taliban leaders to give up their guns.

The jirga — a consultative assembly — is a traditional Afghan means for trying to arrive at a societal consensus. Karzai promised to hold a peace jirga in his inaugural address and Afghans want him to do so.

“People are desperate for peace,” says Masoom Stanekzai, Karzai’s national security adviser, who has a key role in the planning. “We’ve had a positive response from people living under the insurgency or under the government.”

Indeed, I’ve talked with groups of bearded elders from provinces where the Taliban has a strong presence who are eager for the jirga. So, too, are many residents of this dusty, shabby capital with its rutted streets, open-air shops, and smattering of glassy low-rise buildings; they fear a U.S. exit will spark a power struggle like the one that reduced the city to rubble in the mid-’90s.

Yet there is much confusion about the purpose of the peace jirga. It isn’t meant to negotiate with top Taliban officials, but to set the stage for future talks.

Part of the confusion stems from Karzai’s grand talk of reconciliation with Taliban leaders. Contrary to rumor that talks have been ongoing, little has happened so far.

Karzai has declared he wants to meet Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar (who has shown no interest). The Afghan president’s brother Qayum sent messages to Omar’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, (who was arrested recently in Karachi). But no talks were held.

Indeed, all Afghan efforts to generate talks have so far been very preliminary, with little impact. That includes a recent visit to Kabul by representatives of the most “buyable” Taliban leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

U.S. officials have long insisted it was unwise to pursue reconciliation with the “Big T” so long as the insurgents think they are winning. Senior U.S. military officials have worked with the Karzai government to design a program of reintegration for mid- and low-level Taliban officials, which they hoped would lessen the fighting.

Yet events are moving very swiftly in the region, propelled by the (incorrect) belief that the Americans will depart in 2011, so swiftly that Afghan — and U.S. military — officials believe it’s no longer possible to separate reintegration and reconciliation. “We can’t wait until military operations are over,” Stanekzai told me in his cramped office. “We have to move on all fronts.”

So the jirga aims to shape a peace process the entire country can support by giving all political and ethnic groups a say in its design. “We don’t want a peace that undermines the rights of some” including women, Stanekzai told me. “The jirga is about rallying broad support behind the whole policy.”

The goals are tempered, not grandiose. First, the assembly will be asked to endorse a government plan for reintegration of insurgents, funded in part, by an international trust fund.

And, second, it will lay ground rules for any peace talks. “Some felt the jirga must invite insurgent leaders” to take part now, Stanekzai said, but the organizers felt it was too early. Before any talks with the Taliban, he added, it’s necessary to create a peace movement that opposes violence.

Stanekzai expects the jirga will support the Afghan government’s three basic principles for talks: Participants must break ties with al-Qaida and other extremist groups; accept the constitutional process for any political change; and recognize that peace must not undercut the rights of major groups in this complex country. “We don’t want to go back to the (1990s) era of the Taliban,” Stanekzai says.

The assembly will also discuss “what people expect from the government, the international community, and NATO forces” Stanekzai added. Presumably, it could discuss when those troops should leave.

This all sounds fine in principle, but the devil is in the details. No one knows whether delegations will be truly diverse or free to air their grievances against the government. Nor do we know whether the assembly will set up a follow-on body with a clear mandate to develop a peace process.

However, if the assembly can begin a national dialogue about peace that stresses power sharing and nonviolence, it could convince some insurgent groups that there are options to fighting. That could lead to openings for broader reconciliation.

The jirga might be hot air, or it might be momentous, but we won’t know until the Afghans start talking. That’s why U.S. officials should do everything possible to support this process, even if they can’t be certain where it will lead.

— Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. trubin@phillynews.com