Beginning in early 1987, Soviet faith in the Policy of National Reconciliation in the format in which it was initially conceived began to falter. While previously the preeminence of the PDPA in leadership, and the desired identity of Najibullah as the party leader was indisputable for the Soviet leadership, now the "emerging consensus in the Politburo was that the PDPA would be but one of the political forces in power after Soviet troops left. Even Vladimir Kryuchkov and Andrei Gromyko agreed that reconciliation would mean accepting that the PDPA would lose its leading position". In a personal meeting on the July 20, 1987, Gorbachev again attempted to impress on Najibullah the need to incorporate opposition leaders into the Afghan government, but this effort, like earlier, was weakened by Najibullah's biliateral conversations with Eduard Shevardnadze and Kryuchkov. Najubullah retained a strong hold over Kabul and the government apparatus – bar internal divisions within the PDPA – but was not able to incorporate the opposition into the government in any meaningful way, instead giving out "relatively powerless posts to prominent non-PDPA personalities who had until then neither supported nor opposed the government."