December 12, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 26, 1422

MOSCOW, Dec 11: Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov confirmed on Tuesday that Russia would not be sending its forces into Afghanistan as part of a UN stabilization mission.

“Several countries have officially announced their decision to send their contingents into Afghanistan if a corresponding UN resolution is adopted,” the Russian foreign minister told reporters.

“Russia did not make such a decision,” said Ivanov.

His comments came in response to an article on Tuesday in the Kommersant business daily, which cited unnamed sources in the Russian general staff as saying that Moscow was on the verge of sending up to 1,000 soldiers into Afghanistan as part of a UN stabilization force.

Ivanov had earlier said that Russia would support the deployment of such a mission in the United Nations, but had no intention of sending its own forces into a country where it suffered a humiliating defeat in a 1979-89 war.

NO OBJECTION: The top UN envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, on Tuesday said the Northern Alliance had “no objections” to the deployment of an international force in Kabul but admitted no deal had been reached.

Brahimi, in Kabul to smooth a transfer of power to a new interim government, said “operational issues” such as the size of the force, its mission and the withdrawal of alliance soldiers from Kabul still had to be agreed.

The alliance, which ousted the Taliban regime last month with the help of US air strikes, has “no objection to the arrival of the UN-mandated force to cooperate with the authorities of this country,” he told journalists.

However, the UN envoy added he had unable to discuss “numbers or operational issues” because that had to be done by “people who are more versed in military matters than I am.”

Brahimi held talks with two key members of the interim administration due to take power on Dec 22, foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and defence minister, General Mohammad Qasim Fahim.—AFP