UNITED NATIONS, Nov 23: The “battle of the conferences” on Afghanistan has been postponed by one day as participants require time for preliminary discussions, a conference spokesman said here on Friday.

Representatives of Afghan groups seeking to oust the Taliban militia were to meet starting on Monday in Bonn, Germany, but “the talks will now open on Tuesday, not on Monday,” spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said.

Fawzi is a spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special representative on Afghanistan, who convened the conference to bring the triumphant Northern Alliance together with three other Afghan groups.

The delay “will allow the delegations to confer bilaterally, so we will have time on the UN side to confer with delegations, and the delegations can prepare among themselves before the official start of the conference on Tuesday,” Fawzi said.

Others represented at the conference will be former king Zahir Shah, the Pakhtoon tribes in southern Afghanistan who make up most of the population, and some four million refugees, most of whom live in Iran and Pakistan.

Brahimi will preside over the talks, Fawzi said.

The spokesman said he expected as many as 30 Afghan participants, but was as yet unable to name any of them.—AFP