WASHINGTON, Nov 13: Barely 60 hours after President George Bush had declared, with Gen Pervez Musharraf standing by his side, that the United States would not encourage the North Alliance from entering Kabul, American officials attempted on Tuesday to put the best face on the fait accompli in the Afghan capital.

Reacting to the apparent fall of Kabul to alliance forces, the White House on the one hand said it was “very pleased” with the military developments in Afghanistan, but, on the other, stressed that the US was urging the alliance to respect human rights and the efforts under way to build a broad-based coalition for a post-Taliban government.

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said the administration was in constant touch with the alliance, in an apparent reference to attempts being made by Washington to urge caution on the N. Alliance forces in Kabul.

Amidst reports that efforts to assemble an interim administration or a peace-keeping force had been stepped up, a senior State Department official told Dawn America’s special UN envoy on Afghanistan James Dobbins was in Rome, where ex-king Zahir Shah lives in exile, and the ambassador would have already met the former king or would do so soon. Zahir Shah has been considered as the possible head of an interim Kabul administration.

The senior official said urgent consultations were being held with US allies to see how peace and stability could be best ensured in Afghanistan, and the US fully backed UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s efforts in this direction.

The official said the US had told the Northern Alliance that it was critically important to maintain order in Kabul and abstain from reprisals.

It is being suggested in Washington that the sudden withdrawal of the Taliban from Kabul had not been anticipated. On Saturday, after talks with Gen Musharraf in New York, Mr Bush had told reporters that the US and Pakistan “shared a common view that in order for there to be a country that is stable and peaceful on this (Musharraf’s) good leader’s western border, that any power arrangement must be shared with the different tribes within Afghanistan. And a key signal of this is how the city of Kabul is treated. We will encourage our friends to head south, across the Shumali Plains, but not into the city itself. And we believe we can accomplish our military mission by that strategy.”

President Musharraf had said Pakistan was advising against any Northern Alliance takeover of Kabul in view of the past experience of mayhem, and reports here gave prominence to Islamabad’s unhappiness at Tuesday’s developments. But some military commentators have pointed out that the intense bombing being carried out on Taliban troops and the extensive help being extended to the alliance forces should have left little doubt about the inevitability of a takeover of Kabul.

A spokesman for the Northern Alliance, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, said on CNN alliance forces had stopped six kilometers away from Kabul, but when the Taliban withdrew from the capital and there were reports of incidents of law-breaking in the city, they had no option but to move in.

Earlier, before the latest developments, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had suggested on Monday that Kabul should be turned into an open city on the pattern of Berlin immediately after the end of World War II.