December 2, 2001	Sunday	Ramazan 16, 1422

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BONN, Dec 1: Neither Afghanistan’s former king nor the Northern Alliance’s president Burhanuddin Rabbani will head a new Afghan interim government, diplomats monitoring power-sharing talks in Germany said on Saturday.

“It is evident that neither the (former) king nor Rabbani will be head of the cabinet,” said a western diplomat.

A European Union source close to the talks said 87-year-old ex-king Mohammed Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973, was not considered a “practical option” to lead a small interim cabinet, while Rabbani was “not seen as a unifying figure”.

Both sources said one leadership figure currently under consideration was Hamid Karzai, a royalist and Pakhtoon tribal leader now fighting the Taliban.

But they emphasized that discussions were currently centred on sharing out cabinet portfolios, having abandoned an initial UN blueprint of first establishing a larger, parliament-style supreme council.—AFP