KABUL, Nov 19: The Northern Alliance gave only qualified approval on Monday to a UN blueprint for forming a new broad-based government, as fighters in the last remaining Taliban strongholds considered surrender.
The Alliance, which took control of Kabul a week ago after the Taliban abandoned the Afghan capital, said it agreed in principle with the UN-sponsored plan to build a multi-ethnic administration but held reservations about the fine print.
The UN envoy to Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, pushed ahead with efforts to broker a meeting of all Afghan factions in neutral territory.
He met leaders of the dominant Pakhtoon community and ousted Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani. US special envoy James Dobbins also held talks with Rabbani in Kabul.
Acting Northern Alliance interior minister Younis Qanooni said after the Vendrell meeting there was agreement “in principle” for an interim government.
“But on the details we have some observations and we are going to inform Vendrell about that tomorrow morning,” he said.
Rabbani, who returned to Kabul on Saturday after five years in exile, has sought to dispel fears that his return could result in a return to the bloodshed and corruption that marked his 1992-96 reign.
“We came to Kabul to call for peace,” he was quoted as saying.
But the country was far from peaceful. Four freshly slain bodies found on a roadside near the eastern city of Jalabad were believed to be those of missing journalists heading to Kabul.
There have been grumbling in the Northern Alliance about the scope of foreign influence in post-Taliban Afghanistan, highlighted by the rejection on Sunday of an expected influx of troops from the US-led coalition.
“We see no need” for more foreign troops, Qanooni said, while defence minister Mohammad Quassim Fahim said 100 British soldiers at Bagram airbase, near Kabul, were operating without the agreement of the alliance.
A contingent of French soldiers, assigned to secure an airfield outside Mazar-i-Sharif, have been forced to wait in Uzbekistan while negotiations continued with the Alliance on where they would be deployed.
KUNDUZ POUNDED: The United States planes continued to pound Taliban positions around the besieged city of Kunduz, the Taliban’s last holdout in northern Afghanistan.
Estimates of the number of Taliban troops defending Kunduz run as high as 30,000, including a hardcore element of Arab, Chechen and Pakistani fighters from the Al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.
US warplanes have bombed Kunduz and its surrounds for nearly a week, with a Taliban commander, Mulla Fazil, quoted as saying more than 1,000 people had been killed in the airstrikes.
He said the Taliban would under no circumstances surrender to the Northern Alliance after hearing reports of a bloody settling of accounts in the Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif.
Qanooni said Taliban troops who surrender in Kunduz would be transferred to Kandahar, the militia’s southern base.
“Instead of ethnic cleansing we want ethnic trust,” he said. For foreign soldiers fighting with the Taliban “a court will decide their fate”.
In Kandahar, militia commanders were negotiating with tribal leaders for a peaceful handover of power.
“Soon, as a result of contacts and negotiations, the situation in Kandahar will be peacefully solved,” Hamid Karzai, a Pakhtoon tribal leader, said.—AFP