WASHINGTON, Nov 30: The White House said Friday that it is too early to send international peacekeepers into Afghanistan because the military campaign has not run its course and the situation is too “fluid and dangerous.”

“There is a war that is still underway, and our objectives have not yet been achieved,” spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters, adding it was also “premature” to discuss the make-up of an eventual multinational force.

“There is still a mission to be achieved; and that is, the destruction of the Al Qaeda network,” said Fleischer.

The spokesman also indicated that President George W. Bush stuck by the position he laid out while running for office that the US military should be used to fight wars but not necessarily take part in peacekeeping operations. “The president’s philosophy that the military should be used for winning wars remains unchanged,” he said.

Still, Bush “looks forward to the day when” talks in Germany to shape Afghanistan’s post-Taliban political future have borne fruit and “peacekeepers will be able to arrive. But that day has yet not arrived.”

In Bonn, the United Nations said that the four rival Afghan groups meeting there were on the verge of striking an historic power-sharing deal as the landmark power-sharing talks entered their final and most complex phase.

Delegates said they were making headway during frantic rounds of hard bargaining, even though the most prominent Pakhtoon delegate for the powerful Northern Alliance stormed out in a row over ethnic representation. The factions still aimed to reach a final accord on the composition of an interim government by Saturday, keeping within the timeframe of three to five days set out at the beginning of the conference, a UN official said.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon that it was not up to the US to decide the timing or composition of any multinational peacekeeping force, saying both would depend on Afghan decision-makers including the Northern Alliance.—AFP