Updated 5:12 p.m.

BRUSSELS, Belgium – Officially speaking, NATO won't deviate – yet – from its plan to end combat in Afghanistan by 2014. But as defense ministers prepare to meet here on Thursday, some NATO bureaucrats are whispering that it wouldn't be so difficult to wrap the fighting up ahead of schedule.

In a background briefing for reporters, a NATO official I'm not allowed to name pointed to mid-2013 as the beginning of the final phase for its "transition" to Afghanistan control. By then, the "lead responsibility for the planning and conduct of operations" against the Taliban will fall to the Afghan soldiers and police (and militiamen) that NATO trains, the official said. In other words, the heavy lifting on the transition will basically be done by 2013, not 2014.

That may not seem like much of a difference, at first glance. But NATO is likely to reopen the inter-alliance debate about how fast to hand over Afghanistan to the Afghans when defense chiefs begin a mini-summit on Thursday. That's because Afghan President Hamid Karzai and French President Nicolas Sarkozy abruptly decided last week to ask NATO to end combat a year earlier, in 2013.

If that isn't enough to get wavering European allies, whose economically crunched populaces generally don't support the war anyway, to rush to the exits, NATO flacks fended off question after question on Wednesday about a leaked U.S. military report assessing that the Taliban – even after the surge – considers its victory "inevitable." Now at least some in NATO headquarters believe that if the alliance really wanted to leave early, it would be doable.

NATO's public position is that it's not budging on 2014. "That is the goal we stick to," Oana Lungescu, the alliance's press director told reporters on Wednesday. (She refused to comment on the leaked report.)

In any case, 2014 won't bring the end of the war. Several NATO officials here are talking about an "enduring partnership" for some kind of "train, advise and assist" mission for the Afghan security forces "after 2014." The details haven't been worked out – those residual troops will probably live on joint bases with Afghans, U.S. officials have said – and NATO is unlikely to unveil any specific plan until its May summit in Chicago at the earliest. But it's been clear for over a year that foreign military forces aren't all leaving Afghanistan in 2014.

But even if the end of NATO combat isn't the same as an end to the Afghanistan war, some in the alliance think it's technically possible to move up the end of that combat. And the 2014 date arose after Karzai asked for it. If he's now pressing for 2013 instead, it might provide cover for NATO to accelerate its timetable by a year. And to be cynical, that would give President Obama something dramatic to announce at the Chicago summit – where NATO leaders already plan to explain with some specificity how and when they'll hand over the war to the Afghans – right as his reelection bid heats up.

Afghanistan is going to dominate the defense ministerial parley on Thursday and Friday, Lungescu said. There won't be any announcement of a faster timetable. But now that one is considered feasible, the talks might represent an opening salvo of a decision that would bring NATO troops home faster.

Update, 5:12 p.m.: That was fast. Ahead of Thursday's NATO defense ministerial, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has flat-out embraced the accelerated timetable for wrapping up combat in Afghanistan, telling reporters on his plane heading to Brussels that the U.S. and NATO will indeed turn the war over to Afghan control a year-plus early. 2013 is now the new 2014. But as Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post reports, that doesn't necessarily mean substantial numbers of U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan earlier, since the Afghan forces remain "dependent on the United States military for airpower, troop movement, supplies and medical aid." Still, never mind what I wrote above about how there "won't be any announcement of a faster timetable," as the faster timetable arrived faster than expected.

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