November 13, 2001	Tuesday	Shaba’an 26, 1422

PARIS, Nov 12: As the Northern Alliance troops gained ground in their march on major Afghan cities on Monday, their power-sharing deal with former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah looked increasingly shaky.

A senior aide to Zahir Shah complained that despite repeated assurances from the alliance’s Europe-based diplomats, its leaders inside the country appeared to have lost interest in the plan for a post-Taliban regime.

“The alliance leaders inside the country have either become too proud by the recent developments or they are really too busy,” one close associate of the former king told AFP requesting not to be named.

He said Zahir Shah was waiting for a statement from anti-Taliban commanders in the newly-captured Afghan strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif to pledge their support to the former king as the country’s possible post-Taliban leader.

“We are in contact with them inside the country,” he said, reached by telephone in Rome, where the former king has been living for 28 years after he was toppled in 1973.

Early last month, Zahir Shah agreed with the Northern Alliance to form a so-called Supreme Council for National Unity of Afghanistan to find an eventual replacement for the ruling Taliban.

A meeting of the two sides, initially scheduled to be held in Rome and then later in Turkey, to exchange lists of each side’s 60 nominees has not yet taken place.

“The initial arrangements were in Rome. We already compromised and went half-away by agreeing to meet in Turkey,” said the aide to Zahir Shah.

The two sides’ interest in the deal appears to be dwindling as the balance of power changes inside Afghanistan.

Some of Zahir Shah’s associates, encouraged by the prospects of some pro-royalist uprisings by the Afghan southern tribes, were apparently not happy with the fifty-fifty formula saying the Northern Alliance controlled only ten per cent.

Those uprisings now seem unlikely.

The Alliance argued they at least had a base inside the country as opposed to Zahir Shah who is trying to shape developments inside the country from afar.

An alliance senior diplomat in Paris, Mehrabuddin Mastan, said Monday the military successes in the country meant there was no need to hold the long-expected meeting in Turkey.

He said officials from the two sides could now meet either in Mazar-i-Sharif or even possibly in the capital Kabul.

“There might be no need to meet in Turkey any more. The meeting could take place inside Afghanistan in one of the liberated cities,” he said.

The ex-monarch’s associate rejected this idea.

“They keep telling us they are coming, but they have not showed up yet,” he said.

The alliance troops Monday morning claimed to have broken the Taliban positions 45 kilometres north of Kabul and captured Qara Bagh, the first outlying district to the capital’s edges.

They say they will advance to the city’s gates and respect US demands not to enter the city itself.

The ex-king has also called for demilitarization of Kabul and deployment of UN peacekeeping troops once the Taliban have left the city.

Yahya Masood, brother of the slain leader of the anti-Taliban groups Monday described Zahir Shah as the only key to durable peace through the establishment of a post-Taliban broad-based government in the country.

He also said that ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who politically leads the Northern Alliance, lacked the qualifications of a leader capable of rallying the allegiance of the Afghan majority.

“The former king’s role is vital at the moment because he has the national backing. The people will gather only around him when he returns back,” Yahya Masood said in an interview here.—AFP