November 6, 2001	Tuesday	Shaba’an 19, 1422

PARIS, Nov 5: Associates of ex-Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah are showing frustration over the deadlock in the US-led campaign in Afghanistan and complain that their plans to replace the Taliban are being stymied by the lack of progress on the ground.

The former monarch’s top political aide Abdul Sattar Sirat said on Monday that Zahir Shah’s plans to set up a post-Taliban regime were losing steam due to the failure of the US attacks to topple the militia so far.

“The continuation of the military situation has in fact delayed our work,” Sirat told AFP from Rome where the ex-king has been living in exile since 1973.

Asked if Zahir Shah’s initiative had bogged down in the face of the Taliban’s resistance to the constant US aerial raids, Sirat responded: “Naturally, there is a kind of cooldown.”

The assumption that the Taliban would be defeated in days under the US military pressure to allow the 87-year-old monarch to return to Afghanistan as a transition leader has not yet materialized.

Zahir Shah, seen as a possible unifying force for Afghanistan’s rival groups, is working to cobble together a council to elect a transitional government for Afghanistan.

Sirat once again demanded that the US operations in Afghanistan, which have entered its fifth week, should be a short in duration to spare civilian lives.

“It is very painful for us to see every civilian killed with the continuation of the operations,” he said.

Sirat nevertheless acknowledged the US “right” to hit the Taliban for harbouring Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect behind the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his tour of the region said the US military campaign could drag on for years. But Sirat said Rumsfeld had been misunderstood.

“He (Rumsfeld) does not mean Afghanistan. He means other parts of the world,” Sirat said.

“It does not mean that Afghans should suffer for another 20 years of war.”

He also criticised the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance for delaying the despatch of their delegation to Ankara to hold talks with Zahir Shah’s camp on the country’s future leadership.

“Unfortunately, they have lost too much time,” he said.

“We are waiting with the knowledge that they have problems reaching a decision and bad weather to fly out of the country.”

A senior leader of the Alliance, Sayed Husseni Anwari, reached by satellite telephone inside Afghanistan said the opposition leaders at last approved Wednesday the choice of Ankara as the venue for the meeting but fell short of setting a date.

The upcoming visit to Tajikistan of the anti-Taliban leader ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani had delayed the delegation trip to Turkey which was expected last month, Anwari said.

Turkey is willing to host the meeting in which the Afghan parties would exchange lists of 120 people they have nominated to the so-called Council for National Unity of Afghanistan they agreed to form early October.

Both sides have hinted that the number could be raised to 250 on the council, which could initially appoint a replacement to the Taliban under emergency conditions.

But according to Anwari, the Northern Alliance wants the council to only convene the Loya Jirgah or grand assembly of local elders inside Afghanistan to do that.

“By emergency situation we meant the immediate fall of Kabul. That has not happened,” he said.

“We should directly work for holding the Loya Jirgah.”

He said in case the Taliban leave Kabul, the Northern Alliance would send a tiny number of its “security groups” into the capital to prepare for the Loya Jirgah while the bulk of its forces would wait at its northern gates.—AFP