Thu, Oct 18, 2001 page5

• Deal on interim Afghan rule suffers setback

  POST-TALIBAN LEADERSHIP The country's opposition government had earlier agreed to cooperate with the Afghan king, but is now pulling back from that deal

  • AP
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  Afghanistan's opposition government is pulling back from an agreement to cooperate with the former king on deciding how the nation might be ruled if the Taliban are defeated, an official said Tuesday.

  Burhanuddin Rabbani, who is recognized by Western powers as Afghanistan's legitimate president, hopes to lead an interim post-Taliban government that would rule the nation, said Mohajeddin Mehdi of the Afghan Embassy in Dushanbe.

  

  A Russian border guard observes the Tajik-Afghan border at the Kupletin outpost, Tajikistan, Tuesday, with the barrel of a Soviet-made SPG-9 recoilless anti-tank gun at left.

  PHOTO: AP

  Though Rabbani's government supports forming a loya jirga -- a national assembly that would eventually decide Afghanistan's leader if the Taliban is defeated -- it should not convene for several years, Mehdi said.

  Rabbani's strategy could aggravate regional tensions and deal a blow to efforts to forge a post-Taliban coalition government. Pakistan, the only nation recognizing the Taliban, fears the Northern Alliance -- its longtime opponent -- will seize power.

  Under a proposal backed by Mohammed Zaher Shah, who was deposed as king in 1973, the sides would form a supreme council which will then call the loya jirga assembly. The assembly would serve as a transitional government before a permanent one is in place. The supreme council was to consist of 120 people -- 50 from the Northern Alliance that has been fighting the Taliban, 50 from the king's side and 20 who are mutually agreed upon.

  But Hamid Sidig, the Afghan monarch's aide, said he believes the agreement with the alliance was still on and that Mehdi's remarks were "irresponsible."

  "We don't see this as an official statement from the Northern Alliance," Sidig said from Rome, where the exiled king lives. "We talked to Northern Alliance commanders yesterday, and they said they would have their list" of nominees to the council in a few days.

  The international community has raised concerns that a defeat of the Taliban could lead to a power vacuum that could be filled by the Rabbani government, which has been criticized for human rights abuses, including summary executions, both before and after it was driven from power by the Taliban in 1996.

  Apparently sensitive to those concerns, the Rabbani government and the former king had agreed that opposition fighters would not enter Kabul, the Afghan capital, until a new form of government was agreed upon.

  Rabbani still holds to that agreement and would propose to the UN that an international peacekeeping force be responsible for security in Kabul until a new government were to be formed, Mehdi said.

  The new political strategy emerged as the opposition forces claim substantial gains against the Taliban in fighting over the past week. The agreement on the loya jirga had been reached before the new wave of fighting and reported advances and "now the situation has changed ... we should finish the fight," Mehdi said.

  Mehdi said opposition forces have advanced to within 10km of Mazar-e-Sharif and that the fighters held the Dedai military airport near the city for several hours overnight Tuesday before being driven out by a Chechen militia backing the Taliban.
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