SHANGHAI, Oct 17: US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday he sees a possible role for UN peacekeepers in the transition to a new government in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban.

Speaking to reporters on his plane to Shanghai for a meeting of Asia-Pacific economies, Powell said the United Nations had wide experience of post-conflict peacekeeping in East Timor, Cambodia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Powell said he was consulting the United Nations about bringing stability to Afghanistan once the US military campaign against the Taliban is over, possibly with former king Mohammed Zahir Shah as a political rallying point for a range of Afghan groups.

“I think there probably will be a role for peacekeepers of some kind and that’s part of our discussions,” Powell said.

The exiled king wrote to Secretary-General Kofi Annan a week ago asking the UN to prepare to dispatch quickly an international peacekeeping force to Afghanistan in case the ruling Taliban collapse under US military strikes.

Shah, 87, warned Annan that a sudden Taliban collapse would create a power vacuum in the Afghan capital that could prove “costly in human lives” as various opposition forces vied for control.

After a meeting on Tuesday of 15 UN Security Council members with Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy for Afghanistan, UN officials and diplomats said any suggestions by the Afghan resistance of UN peacekeepers had been pushed far into the future.—Reuters