Afghans Agree on a Plan for Peace, U.N. Chief Says

U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said Friday that all key warring factions have agreed in principle to a prescription for peace in Afghanistan, paving the way to an end of the 13-year war that has left more than 1 million people dead, 5 million in exile and a nation on the edge of disintegration.

In unveiling details of the fragile, U.N.-brokered plan, Boutros-Ghali and his personal envoy, Benon Sevan, expressed hope that fighting in the South Asian nation could end within weeks. But his announcement at a press conference in Geneva gave no timetable for the critical transfer of power from Afghanistan’s authoritarian President Najibullah to a proposed temporary ruling council.

“This is the first step of reconciliation,” the secretary general said of the 15-member “pre-transitional council.” Sources close to the negotiations said the council would run the country for about 45 days after Najibullah yields power, then step aside for an interim government that would prepare for national elections.

Boutros-Ghali did not provide the names of the 15 council members, whom he described as “impartial personalities,” nor did he say when the Communist-style president, who came to power five years ago, will step down. Najibullah has promised that he will cede power to such a council.

Sources close to the president said this week that he will probably leave the country soon after his resignation, probably at the end of April.

Under the U.N. plan, the council would rule with “all powers and all executive authorities” until a large meeting of Afghans--including officials in Kabul and representatives of many of the Islamic rebel groups that have been fighting the regime from bases in Pakistan and Iran--can be held on neutral territory next month. That assembly would choose a more permanent interim government to rule until elections could be held, preferably within a year.

At a White House press conference, President Bush said he welcomes news of the Afghan agreement.

“We’ve long supported a political settlement in Afghanistan, and we view this negotiating process as a result of our sustained support to end more than a decade of war by securing Afghan self-determination.”

The U.N. announcement comes at a time when Najibullah’s regime and the Muslim rebels are at their weakest points, militarily and politically, since the Soviet Union invaded its southern neighbor in late 1979. The invasion touched off one of the world’s bloodiest and most intractable regional conflicts, a Cold War contest in which the United States and Soviet Union fought each other through proxies.

Moscow pulled out the last of its estimated 115,000 troops in February, 1989. Moscow and Washington agreed to stop sending military supplies to either side as of last Jan. 1.

Without his Soviet backers, Najibullah’s small circle of supporters in Kabul has shrunk to a handful of loyalists, exposing him to internal plots and coup threats.

The seven major factions of the Pakistan-based moujahedeen rebels are also isolated.

Pakistan, the Islamic nation that served as a conduit for an estimated $2 billion in CIA weaponry for the rebels and permitted guerrilla arms depots, training bases and camps for nearly 4 million refugees on its territory, also withdrew its military support from the rebels in late January, officially endorsing the U.N. peace efforts.

And the rebel groups are still divided along religious and ideological lines, with moderate groups favoring a U.N.-brokered coalition government and the extremists insisting on a fundamentalist Islamic regime with little or no U.N. role in the settlement.

Increasingly, though, the dozens of heavily armed Afghan militias and the tens of thousands of soldiers equipped with tanks, missiles and artillery are tearing the Afghan nation apart along traditional ethnic and linguistic lines.

With the backing of dissident members of Najibullah’s ruling party, several ethnic Tajik and Uzbek militias have taken control of the Tajik-majority northern part of the country, including Afghanistan’s entire border with the Muslim republics of the old Soviet Union. The dissidents have formed loose alliances with Tajik rebel groups as well.

In a recent press conference in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar, headquarters for the seven major rebel factions, the leader of the most extreme moujahedeen group, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, made it clear that U.N. negotiators face an extremely fluid situation as they struggle to complete the peace process before the nation disintegrates into warring satrapies.

“I am afraid if the situation is not solved by political means within days, then the situation will be solved in other ways . . . ways most people cannot now imagine,” said the bearded and turbaned Hekmatyar, whose fighters are the best-armed.

Although news reports Friday from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, indicated that Hekmatyar rejected the U.N. peace plan, the guerrilla leader and his top advisers had made clear during recent interviews that his Hizb-i-Islami faction would be willing to accept a solution virtually identical to the one outlined Friday by the secretary general in Geneva.

“I hope that all concerned sides will agree to an interim administration,” Hekmatyar said at his press conference last week, referring to a ruling council of “non-controversial personalities.” Hekmatyar’s only key demands were that no U.N. peacekeeping troops be sent to Afghanistan and that neither Najibullah nor his ruling party members be included in the council.

Hekmatyar indicated that if no such council is formed within a few weeks, his forces would launch yet another offensive in the spring, the annual “fighting season” that has begun as the snow melts in the Hindu Kush range every April since the Soviets invaded.

Boutros-Ghali underlined the urgency of the peace plan, which was the result of months of shuttle diplomacy by Sevan between Kabul and Islamabad, Tehran, Saudi Arabia and other places whose governments, along with Washington, supported the rebels.

“Most of the parties concerned recognize that the transfer of power from the current government in Kabul to the interim government must take place in an orderly manner if chaos and civil war are to be averted,” Boutros-Ghali said in his written statement, which indicated that a nationwide cease-fire would accompany the settlement.

“At this most critical stage of Afghan history, I appeal to all Afghans to put aside their differences and let the wounds heal.”

But in the Afghan capital, where a bitter winter and collapsed economy have left most families surviving only on bread and tea, and Najibullah’s regime so unpopular that even his cash-strapped secret police are openly opposed to his rule, it remained unclear whether there is enough time for the U.N. emergency peace plan to take hold.

“The life is harder and more worthless than ever before,” said one officer of the dreaded Khad, the internal security force Najibullah headed before he was installed as president, during a recent interview in Kabul. “Every day now, we wake up and wonder where the bread will come from, never mind who will be running this country.”