The Obama administration and the Taliban each voiced readiness to enter peace talks while pledging to carry on with a decade of military conflict in Afghanistan until their rival objectives are met.

The separate statements by senior US and Taliban officials illustrated the improved environment for Afghan reconciliation efforts as well as the daunting task ahead. Despite the possibility of some trust-building measures in the near future, such as the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar and the transfer of some Afghan detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, both sides remain committed to the fight.

“We don’t have any idea standing here today what the outcome of such discussions could be,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. The US supports Afghan negotiations toward peace, she said. But everyone, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai, is going into the talks with “a very realistic sense of what is possible,” she said.

For the past month, rumours have swirled about the possibility of peace talks between the US-led coalition in Afghanistan and the Taliban in the Gulf nation of Qatar. On Wednesday, Clinton gave the strongest indication yet of progress toward opening a political representative office for the Taliban in Qatar, whose role as would-be host for peace talks has gained reluctant approval from Karzai.

The United States and its coalition allies are preparing to withdraw most of their forces and end combat operations in 2014, with responsibility for security transferring to the greatly expanded Afghan army and police.

But despite a surge of foreign troops into Afghanistan in the past two years, and an overwhelming superiority in both numbers and firepower, the military effort has been unable to defeat the insurgency. Many now fear that a resurgent Taliban will be able to exploit the withdrawal of the 130,000-strong Nato-led force over the next three years by recapturing wide areas of the south and east.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the success of any negotiations depends on the Taliban adhering to specific conditions, “including laying down arms, renouncing al-Qaeda and abiding by the Afghan Constitution, including its provisions for minority rights and women’s rights”.

Carney said a political agreement was absolutely necessary, at some point, for Afghanistan’s security and stability. But he insisted that the US “will continue to energetically prosecute the military campaign as we pursue this political effort”.

That viewpoint was echoed by the Taliban’s political wing, which suggested in an emailed statement that it could join Afghan factions at the table even as it refuses to accept Washington’s precondition that it recognises Karzai’s government. It insisted that Karzai remained an illegitimate “stooge” of the West.

One of Karzai’s and the international community’s main conditions for reconciliation is that the Taliban must accept the Afghan Constitution, meaning they must recognise Karzai’s government. Mujahid’s outright rejection of this is likely to be an obstacle in the peace process.

The Obama administration and its allies appear to have gradually embraced talks as the best way to end the war, even if fighting continues beyond the deadline to withdraw foreign combat forces in 2014. The US says those talks must be led by the Karzai government, but it has made its own contacts with Taliban representatives over the last year.