All forces must pull out of Kabul: CE: UN peacekeepers demanded
ISTANBUL, Nov 13: President Gen Pervez Musharraf called on Tuesday for all forces to withdraw from Kabul and the deployment of a UN force in the city following its capture by the Northern Alliance.
“Kabul should remain a demilitarized city,” Gen Musharraf said after a brief meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit during a stopover on his way from New York to Islamabad.
The president stressed that Kabul’s demilitarized status was very important to avoid ethnic clashes in the city that had led to atrocities in the past.
“The Northern Alliance or any other group... must not enter Kabul because we know from the past experience the kind of atrocities and killings that took place in Kabul. We don’t want that to happen again,” he said.
“It is very important that there is some kind of a UN umbrella and a UN force, maybe also specially composed of OIC countries, which means the Muslim countries, to be there for the purpose of giving stability,” he said. Turkey and Pakistan, he added, could play a role in such a peacekeeping force.
To avoid ethnic conflict in Afghanistan, a formula for the country’s future administration should be outlined as soon as possible with the participation of all ethnic groups, including the dominant Pakhtoon, who form the majority of the Taliban, the president said.
“We must come out with a political arrangement as fast as possible. The more this vacuum lasts, the more there will be a danger of infighting,” he said.
“Any political arrangement must be multi-ethnic according to the demographic composition of Afghanistan... There has to be a Pakhtoon representation, because at the moment within the Northern Alliance there is no Pakhtoon representation, this must emerge,” he added.
Pakistan, he pointed out, would not welcome any Taliban troops on its soil if they fled to Pakistan. “They must remain in Afghanistan, we would not like to accept anybody in Pakistan, we already have 2.5 million refugees, we cannot accept any more”.—AFP
