LONDON, Nov 27: Afghan delegates attending talks in Bonn have agreed on the principle of forming a broad-based transitional government.

The aim of the Bonn meeting is to form an interim administration tasked with paving the way for an interim broad-based government and later the holding of a Loya Jirga (council of elders).

A UN spokesman said the first point in the agenda was to form an “interim supreme council” to guide Afghanistan through a period of transition to democracy, which the UN hopes will last not more than six months.

A broader interim government is then to be agreed upon. Finally a loya Jirga would be convened to decide how the country is to be governed after the six-month period.

The conference will continue for three to five days and will work to achieve an agreement on different issues on the agenda.

The conference is being attended by four Afghan groups. Mr Younis Qanooni heads a delegation from the Northern Alliance. Among the other three groups is a delegation from the former king Zahir Shah, headed by Abdul Sattar Seerat.

The “Peshawar group” is headed by Mr Hamid Gilani and the “Cyprus group” by Himayoun Jarir. The Taliban are not represented.

Mr Younis Qanooni, in his address, said the delegates had a responsibility to take Afghanistan out of the medieval ages. The tone of Mr Qanooni’s speech was conciliatory. He said his group was not seeking unilateral power in Afghanistan.

A prominent Pakhtoon tribal leader from the south of Afghanistan, Mr Hamid Karzai, addressed the conference on the phone line.

He said: “we are one nation, one culture. We are united, not divided, and we are Muslims and believe in Islam which is tolerant.”

But some observers are raising questions about how representative the conference is - especially of Afghanistan’s biggest ethnic group, the Pakhtoons.

During next few days the delegates will discuss the formation of an interim administration and the deployment of security forces in Afghanistan.

Sources close to the conference told Dawn that a provisional council may comprise more than one hundred delegates sent by Afghanistan’s different ethnic groups-from Pakhtoons and Tajiks to the Kyrghyz and Ismailis.

Women are also expected to be included.

The council will elect a chairman, who would be recognized as a symbol of national unity. The most likely candidate is the former monarch, Zahir Shah, 87, who is planning to return to Afghanistan from 28 years of exile in Rome.

The day-to-day running of the country will be the responsibility of a chairman and his deputies.

As the talks got under way, the special UN envoy for Afghanistan, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, read out a message from Secretary General Kofi Annan describing the meeting as the beginning of a “new age” for the Afghan people.