December 6, 2001	Thursday	Ramazan 20, 1422

KABUL, Dec 5: Ousted Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani ignored instructions from his Northern Alliance not to re-enter Kabul last month, Defence Minister General Mohammad Qasim Fahim said on Wednesday.

Rabbani, who remained the UN-recognised head of state despite being ousted in 1996, staged a triumphant return to Kabul on November 17, four days after Alliance troops took over the city following the flight of the Taliban.

The move sparked concerns that the Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of mainly ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic minorities, was trying to monopolise power despite UN efforts to forge an inter-ethnic government.

“We told president Rabbani that it would serve the interests of our country not to enter Kabul. He stayed outside for three days and then entered,” Fahim said in an interview with French daily Le Figaro.

“We ensured he gave a commitment to transfer power when the situation was right. He did commit himself to that deal,” he added.

In the immediate aftermath of the capture of Kabul, top figures in the alliance, notably Interior Minister Yunus Qanooni, insisted repeatedly that its nominal leader Rabbani would not return to Kabul.

But the white-bearded professor of Islamic studies, who presided over four disastrous years as president of Afghanistan from 1992-96 when factional infighting killed thousands of civilians, reinstalled himself at the presidential palace.

The 61-year-old then began to challenge the troika of young moderates who have emerged as the new strongmen of the Alliance: Fahim, Qanooni and foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, who are all ethnic Tajiks from the Panjsher Valley.

While they sent Qanooni as chief delegate to the UN-sponsored talks in Bonn with a mandate to strike a power-sharing accord, Rabbani back in Kabul tried to hold them back.

According to Western diplomats in Bonn, the ousted president held up the negotiations for days by refusing to approve nominations to the new 29-member interim cabinet, insisting this should happen later in Kabul.

At one point a frustrated Qanooni threatened to go over Rabbani’s head and both German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer and top UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi had to call the deposed president to make him climb down.

Marginalised, Rabbani on Tuesday insisted that his political career was not over and he was expecting a post in the interim administration.

But this illusion was swiftly shattered.

“The United Nations has already thanked him for transferring power,” a Northern Alliance insider told AFP.

All three of his rivals, meanwhile, will remain in their posts in the defence, foreign and interior ministries in the six-month government that is to take power on Dec 22 under the historic accord signed by Afghan factions in Bonn Wednesday.—AFP