KABUL, Nov 13: The Northern Alliance has no plans to rule the country following its triumphant march into Kabul and remains committed to a peace process under the ex-king, a senior official said.
“We are just here to keep security and stop criminals from from bothering our citizens. We are still committed to the Council of National Unity which we have formed with the former king (Mohammed Zahir Shah),” said Younis Qanooni, a key member in the anti-Taliban leadership.
Qanooni, the former deputy defence minister in the UN-recognised government of president Burhanuddin Rabbani, said Rabbani would not enter Kabul or appoint any ministers to a new government.
“Professor Rabbani will not enter Kabul. He will not declare himself president and will not appoint any ministers,” he said.
Rabbai was ousted from Kabul by the Taliban in 1996 but is still recognizsed as president of Afghanistan by the United Nations.
Qanooni said his defence chief, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, may have entered Kabul along with other opposition military officials, but they would only be organizing the security of the city.
Iranian state television earlier reported that Fahim and Rabbani’s foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, arrived in Kabul early Tuesday.
“We are committed to the establishment of a government which all Afghans will like. After 22 years of fighting, tragedy and misfortune we want to see a peaceful Afghanistan. We do not want to govern the country,” Qanooni said.
He said the Taliban had “evacuated all of Kabul’s surroundings and possibly also Loghar province in the south and Maydan Shar”, capital of Wardak province to the west.
He said “local people” controlled those provinces.
“We also have some reports from Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan (south) that people have expressed their desire to cooperate with us,” he said.
BOMB CACHE: The United States plans to draw on its stocks of bombs in NATO-member Norway for use in its campaign in Afghanistan, the Norwegian defence ministry said on Tuesday.
Washington last borrowed from the stocks in 1999 during a NATO campaign to stop Serbian aggression against Kosovo’s Albanian majority.
“U.S. authorities have said that they will ship out conventional bombs stored in Norway,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
The bombs are stored at five military airports around the nation, including in Arctic Norway where NATO built arsenals during the Cold War, fearing an invasion by the neighbouring former Soviet Union.—Reuters