Afghans at Summit Still Hopeful About a Deal

Afghan leaders insisted Friday that they still hope to reach agreement soon on an interim government and parliament for their country despite the refusal by officials of the dominant Northern Alliance in Kabul to approve a list of candidates for the leadership positions.

A day after one alliance delegate walked out of the talks, the rest of his faction spent the day waiting for allies in the Afghan capital to endorse nominees for about 15 interim Cabinet posts and a proposed 150-seat legislature.

The other three delegations to the U.N.-brokered summit here, which aims to create a broad-based leadership after nearly 23 years of civil war, had already put together their wish lists for the transitional bodies. But they had to wait for the proposals from the alliance, which has de facto rule over most of Afghanistan, to begin the tough bargaining over who gets what.

Instead, the Northern Alliance delegation requested a 10-day suspension to return to Kabul for consultations with recalcitrant allies. But the U.N. hosts rejected the request and ordered the factions to get down to business.

“We don’t think it’s a major problem. They asked for a delay of some days, but we told them, ‘No, we need to agree quickly,’ ” Zalmai Rassoul, secretary to the ousted king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, said by telephone from the sequestered conference site. He said he expected the impasse to continue through the night but for serious discussion of personalities to be underway by today.

Earlier in the day, all four groups--the alliance’s United Front political entity and delegations representing the deposed king and exiles based in Pakistan and Iran--confirmed their commitment to reach agreement on the composition of the interim government as well as enhanced security for Kabul before wrapping up the talks in this retreat near Bonn.

But alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, who has remained in Kabul, has been making demands from afar that a senior U.S. official here deemed “unhelpful.”

At a news conference in Kabul, Rabbani said the two interim governing bodies must be seated through elections, not named by the delegates, who have been meeting here all week for the express purpose of deciding on new leaders.

Rabbani also appeared to be putting conditions on the parties’ general agreement here that foreign peacekeepers would be called in to boost security in the ravaged, lawless country. Rabbani said no more than 200 foreign troops should be allowed to augment the Afghan police and security forces who are now in place--and who are made up of alliance fighters who entered Kabul when U.S. airstrikes chased out the Taliban regime Nov. 13.

And even though all parties have broadly agreed that the former king should serve in a figurehead role as interim head of state, Rabbani dismissed the monarchy as “extinct, like the dinosaurs.”

Rabbani said ahead of the talks on Afghanistan’s future that he would abide by whatever agreement the delegates reach here. But his persistent objections to concluding a deal outside Afghanistan have brought his sincerity into question.

“We have Mr. Rabbani’s word that he will respect whatever comes out of the Bonn talks,” U.N. spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said of the conference. He added that the United Front delegation chief, Younis Qanooni, had reiterated his side’s readiness to compose a leadership that all factions can sign off on before heading home.

Diplomats from among the 18 nations monitoring the conference speculated that the alliance’s reluctance to name names and the departure of a leading ethnic Pushtun member, Haji Abdul Qadir, were “calculated gestures.” Qadir pulled out of the talks late Thursday but remains in Germany and has promised to support what is agreed to here, other delegates reported.

“We do not expect any major setback as a result of his departure,” Fawzi said, expressing the hope that Qadir, who is governor of the volatile eastern province of Nangarhar and one of the few Pushtuns in the alliance hierarchy, would serve in the new government.

Rabbani, 61, has made no secret of his desire to resume power, having returned to Kabul from exile two days after the alliance took over the city. During a trip to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, this week and in interviews and news conferences, the former president has sought to impose his will on the delegates here.

He complained of “pressure on our delegation” at the talks here to reach a final agreement, and some diplomats readily confirmed that.

“Clearly, all the international observers here are urging that this process be successfully completed,” said James Dobbins, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan.

Rabbani and his alliance, made up primarily of minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, probably prefer to have the conclusive talks on the country’s future in Kabul because they have what one diplomat called “the home field advantage.” Having fought the fundamentalist Taliban for the last five years instead of taking refuge abroad, alliance officials have been posturing as the rightful inheritors of power.

But Qanooni has pledged with the other delegation chiefs to draft a fair and functional interim government as the first step toward a constitutional democracy, which U.N. hosts say will probably take two years to achieve. For the delegation to walk away from the talks here without that transitional team would cost the alliance not only credibility but also billions of dollars in foreign aid waiting to flow into the country once some administrative framework is in place.

“We believe it is important because Afghanistan won’t get reconstruction assistance until there is an interim authority,” Dobbins said.

Fawzi was still predicting that the talks could end in agreement as early as today, an unofficial deadline the U.N. sponsors mentioned at the start. He repeated that the U.N. mediator, Lakhdar Brahimi, is prepared to “nudge them along.”