Interim Leader Agrees to a Rebel-Led Afghanistan : Asia: The acting president pleads for peace. He says new government must represent all factions of the guerrillas<i> .</i>

The crumbling regime of ousted President Najibullah agreed Tuesday to yield “all powers of state” to a government of Muslim rebels, as the U.N. peace envoy to Afghanistan began an urgent dialogue with the first of the many guerrilla factions that are carving the nation into loose, autonomous coalitions.

The announcement by Abdul Rahim Hatif, Afghanistan’s acting president, was in response to a demand by guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Masoud that those who succeeded Najibullah must hand over the capital to “a moujahedeen government.” But Hatif stressed that the new government must be a unified group representative of all rebel factions, and he appealed for a peaceful transition of power.

“There should be no confrontation, no bloodshed, no loss of life and property,” Hatif said.

Artillery pieces to the south and west of the capital, meanwhile, fired outgoing shells throughout the day to deter advancing rebel forces of fundamentalist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who has yet to join a coalition of more moderate forces to the north. Hekmatyar has vowed that his group will attack Kabul if the regime does not surrender the city before Sunday.

U.N. envoy Benon Sevan spent the day in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where he met with the leaders of several former regime militias and local moujahedeen commanders, who formed a coalition two weeks ago that rebelled against Najibullah’s rule and now controls the northern nine provinces of the country.

Among the issues Sevan raised during the session was the fate of Najibullah, who was stopped at Kabul’s international airport by troops loyal to an Uzbek tribal militia commander, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostam, when the dictator tried to flee the city last Thursday.

The results of Tuesday’s talks were inconclusive, and Najibullah apparently remained holed up in a U.N. compound in Kabul, where he took refuge Thursday night.

Sevan was planning to meet today with Masoud, the moujahedeen commander who heads a large coalition force about 40 miles north of the capital, which he has pledged he will not take by force.

Masoud who was conspicuously absent from Tuesday’s negotiations, has been trying to unify the long-fractious moujahedeen into an interim Muslim council to rule the nation.

Wire service reports from Peshawar, Pakistan, where the Afghan rebels have long been headquartered, said the various guerrilla factions failed to agree on a leader of a new 20-member governing council to take control of the government. The chief stumbling block was reportedly Hekmatyar’s refusal to accept Masoud in the post.

Acting President Hatif, a 66-year-old intellectual and moderate who never joined the regime’s ruling Homeland Party, said he was elevated to his post because he is the eldest of Najibullah’s four vice presidents, the civilian leadership that was installed after Najibullah was driven from power.

Meeting reporters in the anteroom of Najibullah’s old office at the ruling party’s headquarters, Hatif said the affairs of state are being run by committee. But it was clear that the government was hardly functioning. The president had to apologize that he could not even offer his visitors tea.

Below the surface calm here in the capital, there were reliable reports of growing tension among the many factions in what is left of the regime.

Hatif was speaking for what is believed to be the largest ruling party faction, a group of social democrats who linked up with moderate military commanders and Masoud’s guerrillas to depose Najibullah. The group largely consists of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, who have never been a majority in the Afghan government.

Their takeover last week from Najibullah, a member of the long-ruling Pushtun community, has hardened the traditional rivalry, and there are growing fears that Pushtun factions in the military and ruling party are negotiating a countermove with fundamentalist leader Hekmatyar.