Afghan Agreement Near, Mediator Says : Asia: Regime and rebels approaching compromise, U.N. envoy declares. He says Najibullah’s safety is a key issue.

Appealing to all Afghans to “refrain from revenge,” the U.N. envoy trying to broker an urgent peace in the country said Monday that regime leaders and Muslim guerrillas massed outside the capital are moving closer to compromise. But he stressed that the safe departure of ousted dictator Najibullah is “part and parcel” of any interim agreement to fill Afghanistan’s power vacuum.

In his first public statement since Najibullah was ousted Thursday, Benon Sevan refused to comment on reports that the generals who helped drive Najibullah from power finally agreed Monday to grant him safe passage out of this capital, which is gradually moving back from the brink of anarchy.

Sevan also refused to confirm or deny that Najibullah is under U.N. protection, saying only, “I understand he is in Kabul.” But it is widely known that the deposed strongman took refuge in U.N. quarters after he was turned back by dissident troops at Kabul’s international airport. On Monday, Sevan would comment only obliquely. “I feel fully responsible for a certain situation, and therefore I cannot afford to indulge in saying things which may affect lives,” he said. “It’s a sensitive issue. It’s a dangerous issue also.”

Sevan surfaced after four days of sensitive, private talks with Afghanistan’s new leaders, who turned on Najibullah, engineered his fall and now insist that he be handed over for trial and punishment--negotiations in which a coalition of at least eight nations supported the United Nations’ demand for Najibullah’s safe passage.

In New Delhi, the Reuters news agency quoted a senior Indian security official as saying preparations have been made to receive Najibullah. His wife and three daughters are already in the Indian capital.

Sevan indicated frustration over the fact that the talks on Najibullah’s fate were drawing attention away from the more critical negotiations between rebel and regime leaders to form an interim council to govern the country. To a flurry of questions about Najibullah’s whereabouts, he wryly responded: “Can we talk first about the peace? Which is more important?”

The U.N. envoy said that today he will begin shuttling by air between cities involved in the conflict.

But it was clear Monday that the process of Afghan reconciliation is snowballing down a route totally apart from the U.N. brokering process. Coalitions continued to form throughout the country between Afghan army commanders and the leaders of the moujahedeen, the Muslim guerrillas who have battled them for the past 13 years.

One by one, in every key city except Kabul, heavily armed rebel groups pulled out of their bunkered siege positions. The army’s defense lines came down, and opposing commanders sat down together for the first time to form interim coalition councils.

Even in Kabul, where the vestiges of the regime’s ruling Homeland Party are desperately negotiating their own futures with powerful rebel leader Ahmed Shah Masoud, encamped north of the city, the military leaders who helped depose Najibullah gradually started removing the symbols of the 1978 Communist revolution that sparked the rebels’ holy war.

At a memorial in front of Kabul’s now-leaderless presidential palace, the tank that an Afghan general rode into the city during the Soviet-backed revolt against the monarchy 14 years ago was hauled off in an army truck, leaving behind just a small garden of pink and red flowers.

And there were far more tangible symbols of the military’s moves toward building a coalition force of soldiers and moujahedeen .

At Pol-i-Charki Prison, the dreaded jail for political prisoners, military authorities began releasing hundreds of moujahedeen commanders and dissidents who had languished there for years.

“They told us, ‘Mr. Najibullah is gone. You can go free,’ ” said Zabiullah, 29, who was captured while fighting with Masoud’s forces three years ago.

Meanwhile, well beyond the capital’s outer western defenses, in a mountainside bunker complex along the strategic highway linking Kabul to the west, a regimental army commander, Capt. Mohammed Usman, said he and his men were anticipating the arrival of guerrilla leader Abdul Haq, known in moujahedeen circles as “the commander of Kabul.”

Abdul Haq, who belongs to a faction that split with Masoud’s party more than a decade ago, pledged his support to Masoud as chairman of the recently formed Islamic Holy War Council, which is demanding that the regime cede Kabul to an interim moujahedeen government.

The pledge of loyalty from Haq, who commands the guerrilla force that is now ruling through coalition in the strategic town of Sarobi southwest of the capital, was a key indication that the long-fractious rebel movement was rapidly reunifying over the prospect of ruling the nation.

Fears persisted that fundamentalist rebel leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has yet to join forces with Masoud, will send guerrilla units to attack Kabul. And one news agency quoted spokesmen for Hekmatyar in Pakistan as warning that if the new government does not surrender within a week, his guerrillas will move on the capital.

Masoud, whose coalition force of Muslim rebels, tribal militiamen and former regime forces has massed hundreds of tanks and thousands of men north of the city, reportedly sent reinforcements to shore up Kabul’s southern defenses, the expected target of an attack by the hard-line rebels.

But the mood in the capital on Monday was more relaxed than on any day since last Thursday, when Najibullah’s ouster pushed the nation to the brink of chaos. Children played in the streets. Women who had hidden indoors came out of their homes in suburbs where Muslim guerrillas, among the moderates now allied with the regime, had taken up positions

Reflecting the emerging new optimism among the people, U.N. envoy Sevan, who has tirelessly shuttled between the rebel camps in Pakistan and the regime stronghold of Kabul for the past year, declared: “The spirit of compromise is there now. I’m sure they will find their way.”

The only issue left to decide, he said, is whether the power vacuum will be filled by an interim council of “impartial personalities” or a so-called moujahedeen government consisting largely of political and guerrilla leaders from all the major Muslim parties and tribes that have been battling the government.

Reliable diplomatic sources said the negotiations over the nation’s leadership focus on a 24-member council that includes 21 political and military leaders from the rebel force and three representatives of the army.

It is a proposal that has emerged from the rounds of intense negotiation between commanders of both forces, and one entirely outside the U.N. peace process. But to widespread criticism that the emerging solution has eclipsed his efforts, Sevan responded: “We never meant to establish a structure or a mold to which everyone else has to fit in.

“It’s entirely up to them to decide what form of government they want to have--whether it’s going to be impartial, whether it’s going to be a moujahedeen government. Whatever they want is their business.”

* A CRITICAL DECISION: Victorious rebels must choose peace or chaos. World Report