ROME: Time appeared to be running out the other day for the touted return to Kabul of Afghanistan’s exiled king as the figurehead of a transitional government, despite UN assurances that he remained relevant.

Zahir Shah issued a written statement from his villa in Rome promising to return soon but analysts said he was failing to seize the opportunity of the Taliban’s sudden downfall.

The former king has, however, agreed to send a delegation to a meeting of Afghan groups that would start forming a provisional government for the country, but aides said the time and venue remained to be decided.

The UN Security Council on Wednesday backed plans for an urgent meeting of the various Afghan tribal groups to help fill the power vacuum created after the Taliban leaders fled the capital Kabul this week and the opposition Northern Alliance moved in.

Every day the Northern Alliance consolidated power in conquered cities dimmed the likelihood of the king making a comeback, analysts said.

Zahir Shah has offered himself not as a monarch but as a figurehead around which bickering tribes and ethnic groups can rally, 28 years after he was ousted in a coup.

Francesc Vendrell, the UN’s deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, said he would travel soon to Kabul and tell Northern Alliance leaders that the king was still relevant. “I and the UN are convinced that he has a role to play in the future of Afghanistan,” Vendrell said.

The US has also backed the king as a reassuring figure for his fellow ethnic Pashtuns who fear persecution by the triumphant Northern Alliance, which is composed mostly of ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks.

Spurning suggestions of a dramatic televised address to the nation, the 87-year-old’s aides faxed media organisations a low-key statement calling for unity and peace.

Addressed to Afghans, it said: “I am giving you this message on the eve of Ramazan. I appeal for unity among the Afghan people. Avoid vendettas and respect the rights of the people.

But the speed and scale of that triumph has reportedly emboldened the alliance to backtrack on promises to cooperate with a man critics write-off as too old, frail and out of touch for Afghanistan’s brutal politics.

“What is revealing is that the king has been repeatedly mentioned in the past two months as a potentially important figure and yet there seems to be this extraordinary passivity about him,” said Robert Templer, Asia director of the think thank International Crisis Group.

Abdul Sattar Sirat, an aide to Zahir Shah, said tribal leaders and former Taliban commanders in at least four provinces had pledged support in recent days.

Sirat admitted the king had no formal representative in Afghanistan despite the potential power vacuum, nor were there immediate plans to send one. Sirat rejected criticism that the king was dithering. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.