About 1,600 Afghans will convene Wednesday in a giant tent at Kabul Polytechnic University to discuss how to reconcile with the fighters — even as the US rushes in more troops to ramp up the war. President Hamid Karzai will use the conference to roll out his program to offer economic incentives to Taleban and other insurgent fighters willing to abandon the nearly nine-year war.

Lawmakers, provincial council members, tribal and religious leaders and representatives of civil society will participate. Notably absent from the "peace jirga" — jirga means "large assembly" in Pashto — will be official representatives of the Taleban, although some of the delegates may be insurgent sympathizers.

In a statement e-mailed to news organizations on the eve of the jirga, the Taleban said the conference did not represent the Afghan people and was aimed at "securing the interest of foreigners."

"All the participants of the jirga are persons affiliated with the invaders and their powerless stooge administration in one way or the other," the statement said. "They are on the payroll of the invaders and work for their interests." Another major insurgent group, Hizb-i-Islami, called the conference "a useless exercise" because "only handpicked people" were invited.

Despite the cool reception, Karzai is hoping the jirga will bolster him politically by endorsing his strategy of offering incentives to individual Taleban fighters and reaching out to the insurgent leadership, despite skepticism in Washington that the time is right for an overture to militant leaders.

Some members of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities fear Karzai may be too eager to sell out their interests in hopes of cutting a deal with the Taleban, who, like him, are Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.

About 20 percent of the delegates will be women, a sector that suffered under Taleban rule and would have much to lose in a settlement that gives the insurgents a prominent political role in Afghan society.

"I have to tell you that this program with Karzai sounds like kind of a deal with the Taleban," said Fauzia Khofi, an ethnic Tajik lawmaker who survived an assassination attempt last March in her northern province of Badakhshan.

"Karzai perhaps wants the reintegration money just to help the Pashtuns in the south," she said. "For the peace process, they need to discuss with the other factions who fought against the Taleban," including ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras. Khofi will attend the jirga.

Even among southern Pashtuns, where skepticism of the government and support for the militants run deep, there are doubts whether significant numbers of Taleban fighters will accept the deal, preferring instead to hold out until foreign troops are gone. President Barack Obama has pledged to begin pulling out US troops in July 2011.

Nevertheless, the conference will provide an opportunity for representatives of Afghanistan's complex power structure to determine how to design a peace policy toward the Taleban without giving away the gains in human rights and rule of law achieved since the collapse of Taleban rule in the US-led invasion of 2001.

"We know that there are concerns and reservations among various ethnic groups and other communities in Afghanistan about the reconciliation program," said NATO's top civilian official in Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill. "They want to ensure that all of the gains -- the human rights achievements, both practically and in the constitution itself - are cemented and not put at risk by any process of reconciliation."