By HELENE COOPER and MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — With American troops pouring into insurgent strongholds in Afghanistan and the United States succeeding in killing insurgent leaders with drone attacks in Pakistan, the Obama administration is beginning to consider whether it has gained the upper hand sufficiently to justify an effort to begin talks with the Taliban.

President Obama met with his war cabinet on Friday, and the issue of reconciling with the Taliban is gaining traction, even as administration officials debate whether the time is right.

A senior administration official pointed to recent successes by American and Pakistani forces in capturing and interrogating senior Taliban leaders in Pakistan. In addition, administration officials have sought to maintain a full-court press to persuade their Pakistani counterparts to keep attacking Taliban operatives, the official said.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have all traveled to the region recently to try to keep the pressure on both Afghan and Pakistani officials.

“It is now more a question of ‘when’ than a question of ‘if,’ ” the administration official said, when asked about the idea of reconciliation talks with senior Taliban officials.

Another official, who like the senior administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because internal administration discussions were still at an early stage, said, “There’s been a lot of energy applied to the reconciliation issue in the last few weeks.”

But both officials added that, for now, there are no plans for reaching out soon to high-ranking Taliban leaders. That effort, they said, is likely to wait until after the United States takes on Taliban insurgents in Kandahar in what is expected to be the next major military offensive in Afghanistan.

The operation in Kandahar, the spiritual heart of the Taliban, is expected to be far more difficult than the recent offensive in Marja.

“Urban warfare is a lot more complicated than when you’re going into a hamlet like Marja,” said Brian Katulis, a national security expert at the Center for American Progress. “The real test is Kandahar.”

Mr. Gates, traveling in Afghanistan this week, said that despite the success of the Marja offensive, it was too early to expect reconciliation with some senior Taliban members, cautioning not to get “too impatient.” He said that Taliban leaders would not be interested until “they see that the likelihood of their being successful has been cast into serious doubt,” adding, “My guess is they’re not at that point yet.”

The momentum behind reconciliation got a major boost this week from Britain, the key American ally in Afghanistan. In a speech in Boston, the British foreign minister, David Miliband, called on President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to make as concerted an effort to reach out to disaffected Taliban leaders as British and American troops are making to integrate lower-level Taliban soldiers.

“Without a genuine effort to understand and ultimately address the wider concerns which fuel the insurgency,” Mr. Miliband said, “it will be hard to convince significant numbers of combatants that their interests will be better served by working with the government than by fighting against it.”

The issue — brought up by Mr. Obama himself — was discussed during the 90-minute session in the White House on Friday, administration officials said. But no decisions were made. Participants included General Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Admiral Mullen, and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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