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DUBAI, Feb 9: Former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani was quoted on Saturday as saying the Bonn pact that sidelined him when it set up Afghanistan’s new government was a scandalous trick by the United Nations.
Rabbani, who raised concern with his reluctance to step aside gracefully and hand power to Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai at UN-brokered peacetalks in December, also told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily that foreign troops would not be tolerated in Afghanistan for more than one year.
“What happened was a scandal by all measures for it is shameful for any country that its government be formed outside its borders,” said the former president of Afghanistan, who made a triumphant return to Kabul in November as political head of the Northern alliance.
“It would never have occurred to anyone who fought in defence of this country’s honour that that struggle would end one day with the formation of an Afghan government in Germany,” the Arabic-language daily quoted him as saying.
Accords struck in Bonn in December between the Northern Alliance and three exiled groups provided for a six-month interim government and the convening of a Loya Jirga, or traditional grand assembly, to appoint a transitional authority to lead the country to elections by mid-2004.
Rabbani, who presided over Afghanistan in the early 1990s, said U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi had assured him the peace talks would be merely consultative and that any decisions would be taken in Kabul.
“We were tricked by U.N. representatives...If we had known that they would take decisions there, we would have sent another stronger delegation,” he said. “Fateful decisions were taken in Bonn in the absence of field leaders who dedicated their lives to defend this country’s honour and destiny.”
In 1992, Rabbani’s refusal to relinquish the presidency as part of a power sharing agreement helped spark fighting between rival mujahideen groups in Kabul which ended only when the Taliban swept to power four years later.
Rabbani said his country was weary of fighting and any calls for violence would be “resisted severely”. He said the Northern Alliance was capable of establishing order and that there was no need for international troops to remain after the interim government concluded its responsibilities.
“If foreign troops stay more than five months, with the elapsing of the interim government, or if they exceed one year at most, then that will mean that they do no want stability for this country,” Rabbani said.
TALIBAN REGROUPING: Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said on Saturday leaders of the Taliban movement were regrouping outside Afghanistan and forming new organizations to oppose the government in Kabul.
“The Taliban leaders...apparently they are running new organizations,” Abdullah told reporters in Kabul.
“There are two organizations outside Afghanistan,” he said. “We do not have details of the organizations or their structure but on the whole it is not acceptable that the Taliban be able to act either outside or inside Afghanistan in any capacity.”
Most of the Taliban’s senior leaders have disappeared since the movement was toppled by opposition forces backed by US airstrikes late last year. Abdullah said they would not be allowed to play a political role in Afghanistan again.
ROBBERS KILL SIX: Six people have been killed by armed robbers on roads in southern Afghanistan, the latest victims in spiralling crime that has followed the demise of the Taliban, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said on Saturday.
Four people were attacked and killed on a road between the southwestern province of Nimroz and the southern city of Kandahar, while two people were killed on the road between the western city of Herat and Kandahar, the AIP said.
It said the killings occurred on Friday.
“Travelling is not safe on highways,” the agency quoted a trader in Spin Boldak, close to the Pakistan border, as saying.
The unidentified trader said highway robbers had also held up several travellers on the road between Spin Boldak and Kandahar on Friday.
“The law and order situation has deteriorated sharply since the collapse of Taliban system,” the trader said.
The Taliban rule, with its harsh penalties for a variety of crimes, led to a fall in lawlessness in most areas under their control.
Foreign troops have been stationed in Kabul to help restore order, and there have been calls from the interim Afghan government for the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) to be expanded to cover other parts of the country.—Reuters
