December 7, 2001	Friday	Ramazan 21, 1422

BRUSSELS, Dec 6: The US does not intend to lead the international peacekeeping force likely to be sent to Afghanistan to protect the country’s new multi-ethnic government, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday.

Powell made the comments shortly before arriving for talks with NATO partners in Brussels this afternoon.

Speaking to journalists accompanying him to the talks in his official plane Powell said the US was now starting to consider how to wind up its military operations in Afghanistan.

“I think there will come a time when we will want to pass this off to a ‘coalition of the willing’,” Powell said.

“It will be useful to have some force, an organised force in the country that is able to respond to whatever mission might come along,” he added.

Powell said the question of who might lead the new force would be one of the main issues discussed at the NATO talks on Thursday.

But he made it clear that Washington was in no hurry to put its name forward for the job.

“I do not expect it to be an American-led operation,” he said.

Powell’s aides on Wednesday said that several countries had already offered to supply troops to the peacekeeping force, including Britain, France, Germany, Turkey, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Jordan.

But Powell insisted on Wednesday that Washington’s desire to take a back seat in any peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan did not mean the US was turning its back on the country.

He explained that senior state department official James Dobbins would probably be heading to Kabul shortly to set up a permanent US government representation in the Afghan capital

“It would be a liaison office. Jim may be the one who would go in and help set that office up,” he said.

Powell said it was still to early to say whether or not the office would have the status of a fully-fledged embassy, however.

“The actual act of recognising a government, I think I’d better wait for my experts and the lawyers of the state department who have to consult all kind of oracles about such matters. But we will be establishing some kind of presence in Kabul,” he explained.

The secretary of state also said on Wednesday that he would be trying to raise financial support for the new Afghan government during his trip to Brussels.

“I will do a little collection plate banging over the next day or two,” he said.

On Wednesday, representatives from all of Afghanistan’s main ethnic groups agreed in the former German capital Bonn to set up a power-sharing transitional government to replace the country’s toppled Taliban regime.

At the same talks, the members of the new government made it clear they would only accept peacekeepers in Afghanistan if they were under UN control. —AFP