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KABUL, Jan 25: Afghanistan announced on Friday the line-up of a team that will take the first steps to form a government while a clash between the US forces and remnant Taliban served as a reminder of the dangers still lurking.
UN secretary-general Kofi Annan visited Afghanistan to assess its needs and oversee the announcement of the team charged with organizing the first full Loya Jirga, or tribal grand council, since 1964 and which marks the next stage in Afghanistan’s long return to peace.
Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai read out a list of 21 persons, who would organize the Loya Jirga, at a joint news conference with Annan and took pains to stress that the list was a result of decisions by the United Nations without meddling by Afghans.
The tribal leader, said he recognized only four of the names.
“This shows this is a really nice commission, a real impartial commission,” he said.
The commission’s task will be to form a Loya Jirga that will decide the government that will rule Afghanistan for 18 months when the term of Karzai’s six-month administration expires.
Annan said the United Nations had started with a list of 300 nominations for the commission.
“It wasn’t easy to put the list together,” Annan said.
“We set out to get a group that would be independent, a group of men and women that will have integrity, who are highly respected within the society and request them to help organize the Loya Jirga,” he said.
PEACE AND SCHOOLS: Annan arrived from Pakistan to review the activities of the UN-mandated International Security and Assistance Force (Isaf), the 17-nation mission charged with helping the interim administration maintain peace.
He is the latest in a lengthening list of high-profile visitors whose trips reflect Afghanistan’s slow emergence into the world community after years as a pariah state.
Annan received a rousing welcome from Afghan dignitaries at Kabul airport. An honour guard of UN mine clearers — dressed in blue body armour — raised their metal detectors in salute as he reviewed their ranks.
He visited a Kabul school where young women have returned to resume their studies five years after they were forced from the classrooms by the Taliban who outlawed education for girls.
BOMBING AND OSAMA: Hours earlier, US special forces raided what they said were compounds controlled by Afghanistan’s former Taliban rulers, blamed by Washington for abetting Osma bin Laden and his Al Qaeda.
As many as 15 enemy fighters were killed in the clash in southern Afghanistan, military sources in Washington said. One American soldier was wounded in the ankle.
Fighting persisted elsewhere, with U.S. warplanes bombing suspected Al Qaeda hideouts in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, a Pakistan-based news agency reported.
The private Afghan Islamic Press said there had been heavy bombing in the Chagoti Ghar mountains not far from the Afghan town of Khost and close to the Pakistani border.
Yeslam Binladin, who spells his name differently to his brother, told Le Temps his brother was so well known that if he had died someone would know and would have revealed the information by now.
US troops supported by several helicopters and their Afghan allies detained seven people in southern Helmand province late on Thursday, a tribal elder said.
“Seven people were captured last night because they had pictures of Osama in their houses,” Haji Ramazan, a Pakhtoon tribal elder told newsmen after reaching the town of Spin Boldak, near the Pakistan border. —Reuters
