Bonn meet: Delegates aim to set up council in Kabul

By Vaiju Naravane

BONN, NOV. 26. The secluded and brooding hilltop castle of Petersberg is the venue of a U.N.-sponsored conference on Afghanistan which opens here on Tuesday. The conference, earlier scheduled for Monday, was pushed back by a day to give delegates time for pre-conference consultations. The talks begin against the backdrop of intensified fighting between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

The meet will be presided over by the U.N.'s special envoy to Afghanistan, Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, and will attempt to lay the foundations for setting up a government of national unity in Afghanistan. German officials say representatives of four Afghan groups are expected to attend the talks. These are: the Northern Alliance, the Rome Group (also known as the Bonn-Frankfurt-Rome group) around the former king, Mr. Mohammed Zahir Shah, the Cyprus group composed of Hazaras close to the fundamentalist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar backed by Iran, and those of the Peshawar group representing the Pashtuns and led by Pir Syed Ahmad Gailani, backed by Pakistan.

Officials are tight-lipped about the names of the delegates. It is known, however, that Pir Gailani will be represented by his son, Mr. Hamid Gailani, and that the President, Mr. Burhanuddin Rabbani, will not attend the talks. It is also doubtful whether Mr. Zahir Shah will make the trip. India has been invited as an observer nation. Its two-man delegation is headed by the Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Mr. S.K. Lambah, who has also served in the past as India's Ambassador to Pakistan and to Germany. Officials here say the talks could drag for as long as two weeks.

Delegations began arriving in the former West German capital on Sunday amid tight security. Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi wanted the conference to be an Afghan-only affair, somewhat on the lines of the Dayton talks that brought peace to Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1995. This meant delegates would be practically interned, without any contact with the outside world until an agreement is brokered.

But due to pressure from several countries some of the sessions will be open to certain countries, India among them, who have been granted observer status. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council will be present as well as all the states bordering Afghanistan.

``The perfect success would be that we come out of Bonn with an agreement on an executive council,'' said Mr. Hans- Joachim Daerr, Germany's special envoy to Afghanistan. ``The executive council would then carry on the transition.''

The details will have to be worked out by the Afghans, but the council is envisioned as a 15-person body that would begin taking over the functions of a government. Mr. Daerr, however, stressed that even if that were to happen at the Bonn conference ``it would only be the first step, and many more will have to follow.''

With growing disagreement between the various Afghan factions, officials privately say they are pessimistic about a durable outcome. In what would be the first major step toward establishing a government, delegates meeting behind closed doors will attempt to set up a 15-member council as the basis for an interim administration.

Afghanistan has been without a government since the Taliban fled the capital on November 13, and the U.N.-sponsored conference will be an important test of whether the groups can set aside their rivalries and find common ground to establish a broad-based government. The United Nations which has invited all the leading parties and ethnic groups in the country, is hoping the negotiations will not drag on endlessly. ``There is absolutely no room for the Taliban,'' Mr. Daerr said, echoing the position of the U.N. and the Afghan groups taking part in the conference. There is, however, a broad consensus that the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, will have to be represented if the new government is to have nation-wide support. Most Taliban leaders and supporters are Pashtuns.

None of the four groups heading for Germany is specifically a Pashtun delegation, though all will include Pashtun members. The Northern Alliance and supporters of Mr. Zahir Shah are expected to dominate the talks with 11 delegates each, while Afghan exiles backed by Pakistan and Iran - the so- called Peshawar and Cyprus groups - will have five delegates each. All four groups say they support a role for Mr. Zahir Shah in a future government, but the question of whether he will be an ordinary citizen, a figurehead or have real power is a source of disagreement.

The talks are part of a two-year plan to set up a democratic government approved by a traditional `Loya Jirga' and representing Afghanistan's many ethnic groups. Initially supposed to start on Monday, the talks were delayed partly because the Northern Alliance could not arrive on time, U.N. officials said. Only U.N. negotiators and delegates from the Rome and Cyprus groups had made it to Bonn by late Sunday.

Mr. Ahmed Fawzi, spokesman for the U.N. Afghanistan envoy, Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, said the delegation lists had not yet been completed. The talks aimed to achieve consensus among the four factions about the next step towards a new government. ``If that next step is a transitional authority, then we will have succeeded,'' he said. ``If the next step is agreement to another set of talks, that would also be considered a success.''

At the U.N meeting today, Mr. Fawzi said altogether delegations from 17 countries would be participating in the meet. This includes the E.U., members of the Security Council and others.

The U.N. has spoken of setting up an interim administration that would lead the country for about two years and draft a new constitution before giving way to a more permanent government. So far, only two women have been named as delegates for the Bonn talks. Ms. Amena Safi Afzali, widow of the Afghan general, Safiullah Afzali, who runs the Women's Islamic Movement of Afghanistan in the Iranian frontier city of Mashhad, is expected to be part of the 11-member delegation headed by the Interior Minister, Mr. Younis Qanooni. Sources close to Mr. Zahir Shah in Rome earlier said that Ms. Sima Wali, an Afghan living in the U.S., would also be a member of their delegation. Mr. Mostapha Zahir, grandson of the deposed monarch and a member of the Rome delegation, said all factions agreed the Bonn talks should set up a small interim council that would convene a larger body to oversee the transition.

Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance leader, Mr. Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik deeply distrusted by the majority Pashtun tribes, offered them an unexpected olive branch by saying that former Taliban officials with clean records could join any new administration. The Northern Alliance's Foreign Minister, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, said the Alliance, made up of Tajiks, Uzbeks and other minorities, was ready to share power - another nod to the Pashtuns who fear a repeat of the bloodshed and power struggles that marked the Alliance's disastrous rule between 1992 and 1996 when the Taliban came to power. ``As an organisation or party, the Taliban will not be included,'' the Northern Alliance said in Bonn. However, they stressed this did not mean a ban on individuals who worked with the Taliban.

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Section  : International
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