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BONN, Dec 4: Following are details of the agreement reached after eight days of talks near Bonn.
The United Nations and Western countries ready to help rebuild Afghanistan hope the factions will agree on names for the new administration on Tuesday or Wednesday — days past an original Saturday goal.
INTERIM GOVERNMENT
The UN-brokered plan will create a cabinet consisting of an interim head of government, five deputies — including one woman — and 23 cabinet members.
The government should take power within a week after the four rival factions agree on the names for the new cabinet.
Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, who is still recognised by the United Nations, is unlikely to have a job in the new administration.
The agreement contains language expressing “deep appreciation to His Excellency Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani for his readiness to transfer power to an interim authority”.
The interim government would serve for six months, by which time a Loya Jirga, a traditional grand assembly, would be held. This assembly would approve a second stage administration, which would then work on a constitution and prepare elections hoped to be held in about two years.
FORMER KING
The original draft of the agreement said Afghanistan’s 87-year-old former king Zahir Shah should open the Loya Jirga, an honorary function that would reflect the respect most Afghans still have for him.
But negotiations reopened on this on Tuesday and it was not clear whether he would have this role or simply be allowed to attend the Loya Jirga as one of the many prominent figures due to take part.
Supporters of the ex-monarch, who has lived in Rome since being ousted in 1973, say he is ready to move to Kabul as soon as international peacekeepers are in place to provide security.
PEACEKEEPERS
The accord asks the UN Security Council to consider mandating an international force to Afghanistan to maintain security for the Afghan capital Kabul and surrounding areas.
Exile groups have said they will not return to enter a power-sharing government in Kabul, now firmly in the hands of the Northern Alliance, until a neutral international force is established there to guarantee their safety.
Memories are still fresh of the civil war that raged there after the forces of Alliance President Burhanuddin Rabbani seized the city in 1992.
An estimated 10,000 Afghans were killed in the first two years of his four-year rule. Large parts of Kabul, safe during the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, were flattened.
The Northern Alliance conceded it would accept peacekeepers if other factions insisted but said it would prefer troops from Muslim countries. Diplomats say that means nations like Turkey and the Philippines, not neighbours Iran and Pakistan.
AID
Foreign governments led by the West are dangling the prospect of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid if the rival factions can hammer out a deal.
One senior British aid official said the reconstruction of Afghanistan would probably need between $5 billion and $10 billion over 10 years.
A conference of Western aid donors opens in Berlin on Wednesday afternoon and is expected to approve aid to flow immediately if a deal is struck in Bonn. Diplomats hope the Bonn conference will end successfully prior to the aid conference to give a symbolic boost to the gathering.
Conversely, if a deal collapses at the last minute, reconstruction aid — but not humanitarian aid — will stay frozen.
WOMEN
The accord calls for a “broad-based, gender-sensitive government.”
Women enjoyed equal constitutional rights from 1964 until the anti-Soviet Mujahideen conquered Kabul in 1992. The blueprint restores most of the 1964 constitution.—Reuters
