KABUL — All around Kabul, the broken glass was being swept and the dead were still being buried on Thursday. They were the most visible signs of the toll taken by the huge truck bombing in Afghanistan’s capital the day before, but another casualty of the violence may yet come into view: a new attempt to move toward peace negotiations with the Taliban.

Over the past several weeks, the Afghan government and the foreign missions here have been preparing for a conference on Tuesday in which senior representatives from nearly two dozen countries were to gather in Kabul to discuss the war.

The plan was that President Ashraf Ghani would use the conference as a venue to try to build international support as he emphasized that his government was recommitted to the idea that negotiations were needed. Officials characterized it as an Afghan attempt to bring all the regional and political players together to try to take control of a process that has repeatedly been derailed by a lack of cooperation from neighboring powers and by Taliban military gains.

But the bombing, which the government says was committed by the Haqqani wing of the Taliban, has cast a shadow over the effort in several ways — a demonstration of how fragile even the earliest steps of peacemaking can be in the middle of a war.

Abdul Hakim Mujahid, who used to be a Taliban ambassador to the United Nations and is now a member of Afghan government’s High Peace Council, said that even though the Taliban spokesman had denied that the group was responsible for the bombing on Wednesday, the attack had nevertheless further complicated an already difficult task.

“There are movements underway about peace and the making of a peace deal, but I am not hopeful about the current situation,’’ Mujahid said.

First was the physical reality of a huge bomb going off in the diplomatic district of Kabul.

Aides to Ghani said that he was determined to go ahead with the conference even if it meant some of the foreign dignitaries attending via video conference. And Afghan officials and diplomats scrambled around the city Thursday, often having to skirt the blast’s large crater as it was being filled by city workers, in a push to keep the meeting on schedule.

Some Western officials said the meeting was on schedule as late as Thursday evening. But several others expressed concern, saying that the security environment was just not right for dignitaries from their capitals to visit. One diplomat said that even the idea of visiting the palace for briefings felt daunting, given how close the bombing was and how steep the death toll was, rising to almost 100 people Thursday.

The damage from Wednesday’s blast was so widespread that some of the embassies in Kabul were in no shape to host their own dignitaries for the meeting. The windows of the Foreign Ministry, including the hall where many of the sessions were supposed to happen, were also blown in.

NEW YORK TIMES