MOSCOW — After two days of talks in Moscow, the Taliban and prominent Afghan politicians, many of them former enemies, said on Wednesday that they had charted a broad road map for ending Afghanistan’s 18-year war, structured around the withdrawal of American forces from the country and the Taliban’s commitment to citizens’ fundamental rights.

Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan and the leader of the politicians’ delegation, declared the talks a “big achievement” that would help push toward “peace, stability and an Afghanistan free of foreign forces.”

The meeting, at the Kremlin-owned President Hotel, was the first significant public contact between the Taliban and prominent Afghans in years, with the Islamist insurgents presenting more detail on some of their positions, including on women’s rights.

At best, however, the event was a brainstorming session because of a conspicuous absence at the table: The government of President Ashraf Ghani was not represented, meaning none of the agreements would carry any weight of implementation. Officials close to Mr. Ghani’s administration have said such meetings undermine the fragile Afghan state.

And the final statement released on Wednesday evening lacked details and, reflecting the conflicting views of the participants, proposed no timeline for an American withdrawal. Instead, it laid out a basic vision for a post-peace Afghanistan. Its nine points included a commitment to a strong and inclusive central government, and assurances that citizens’ fundamental rights — particularly women’s — will be protected.

The participants also called for trust-building measures to advance talks between the Americans and the Taliban, such as the release of prisoners “who are elderly or ill” or have “little of their term left” and the removal of insurgents’ names from sanctions lists.

“We saw opportunities in their sincerity and flexibility that the talks necessary for peace, which in the past would only get to general contours, can now be moved to details,” said Omar Zakhilwal, a former Afghan cabinet minister and ambassador who participated in the talks.

Mr. Zakhilwal said the Taliban representatives had shown “a genuine desire for peace, and we saw flexibility in their positions,” particularly in private discussions held away from the cameras.

The discussions in Moscow came two weeks after Taliban and American diplomats announced significant progress in six days of negotiations in Doha, Qatar, where the Taliban maintain an office. Both sides said they had agreed in principle to a framework on two fundamental issues — that the Taliban would not allow terror groups such as Al Qaeda to use Afghan soil for attacks, and that the United States would withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.

After the Doha negotiations, Taliban sources suggested they and the Americans had already agreed to a timeline for withdrawal of about half of the 14,000 American troops in Afghanistan. On the sidelines of the Moscow meeting, the deputy head of the Taliban delegation, Abdul Salam Hanafi, said the Americans had told them in Doha that half of their troops would withdraw before the end of April.

His claim was rejected by both the United States Embassy and the American military command in Kabul.

“Our mission hasn’t changed. We have no orders to withdraw,” said Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for the American forces in Afghanistan. Mr. Hanafi said late Wednesday that the timeline he had spoken of was just an idea, not an agreement.

President Trump has repeatedly emphasized his desire to end the United States’ military involvement in the Middle East, and during his State of the Union address on Tuesday said, “Great nations do not fight endless wars.”

But though he suggested last year that he wanted to bring troops home quickly, on Tuesday Mr. Trump spoke of the peace talks and withdrawal as part of a joined process.

“As we make progress in these negotiations, we will be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counterterrorism,” he said, referring to the recent talks between American and Taliban representatives. He said that he had accelerated negotiations with the Taliban and others in the hope of reaching a “political settlement.”

Many Afghans worry that an abrupt exit could let the country spiral into vicious fighting similar to that which followed the Soviet Union’s departure after nine years in 1989, when rival Afghan groups leveled large parts of Kabul. And even some hard-line Islamist figures who have spent much of their lives resisting foreign forces voiced qualms about a hasty American exit.

“Don’t stay forever, but don’t rush,” Wahidullah Sabawoon, a former commander of the anti-Soviet Islamist fighters known as mujahedeen, and a participant in the Moscow talks, said of the American military.

Mr. Sabawoon said it would take time to rebuild the country without foreign troops to ensure at least a measure of security.

“I hope the withdrawal will go slowly,” said Fawzia Koofi, a member of the Afghan Parliament and one of only two women at the talks. She added that she hoped for continued “foreign involvement” after a withdrawal to monitor and help enforce the terms of any agreement.

She noted that the Taliban said it had accepted “the Islamic rights of women” but had a very different and constrained view of women’s rights compared with less hard-line Islamic scholars. During the years it held power before 2001, the Taliban closed schools for girls and confined most women to their homes.

Further fueling concerns of what could happen after an abrupt American withdrawal, the Taliban’s chief negotiator, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanekzai, said in an interview last month that the Afghan armed forces, more than 300,000 strong and built at enormous cost, would have to be disbanded after a peace deal.

His comments drew widespread condemnation across Afghanistan, and Afghan participants said the clarifications from the Taliban side at the Moscow talks had brought some ease.

“There is commitment to the system, the national institutions — they do not want their collapse and paralysis, but they want their reform through consultation and their protection and strengthening,” said Mr. Zakhilwal, the former cabinet minister. “They expressed commitment to women’s rights, to media, to fundamental citizens’ rights.”

Andrew Higgins reported from Moscow and Mujib Mashal from Kabul.

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