Alliance Agrees to U.N. Talks on Sharing Power

Racing to fill a political vacuum before it spawns new turf battles among warlords, diplomats won assurances from officials of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance on Sunday that they would begin talks outside the country soon on plans to share power.

Top alliance officials appear sincere in their promise that they won’t try to cling to power or limit other groups to token participation, U.N. special representative Francesc Vendrell said in an interview during his second day of talks here.

“I must believe they mean to start fresh because they surely recall the experience of the 1990s,” Vendrell said, referring to a vicious civil war that began in 1992 and ended with the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul four years later.

The United Nations has accused the Northern Alliance of obstructing political progress. The alliance’s rapid move into the capital as the Taliban retreated to its southern stronghold and its previous insistence that talks on Afghanistan’s future be held in Kabul have led to fears that the alliance has been trying to behave like a functioning government in order to strengthen its negotiating hand.

At the same time, powerful military commanders in the alliance threaten to derail any power-sharing agreement.

Fighting continued on two fronts Sunday where Taliban forces were holed up, Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south. U.S. warplanes struck both areas. B-52 bombers battered the area around Kunduz, and reports emerged that the Taliban offered to withdraw if safe passage were guaranteed by the United Nations.

U.S. officials said that despite conflicting reports, they believed that Saudi militant Osama bin Laden was still in Afghanistan and that his room to maneuver was shrinking.

Vendrell arrived in Kabul on Saturday to try to arrange a meeting of the Northern Alliance, representatives of former monarch Mohammad Zaher Shah and other Afghan groups.

After meeting with Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah on Saturday and political leader Burhanuddin Rabbani on Sunday, Vendrell said he was optimistic that U.N.-sponsored power-sharing talks could begin in a week to 10 days.

Meeting separately with U.S. special envoy James Dobbins in Uzbekistan on Sunday, Abdullah agreed that the first meeting does not have to take place in Afghanistan.

“It will be outside Afghanistan,” Abdullah said. “Some of the venues proposed by Vendrell are acceptable to us--Germany, Switzerland or Austria. From our view, it could be this week. There is no obstacle as far as timing is concerned.”

Top U.S. officials applauded the diplomatic developments but continued to warn the Northern Alliance against going it alone.

“We have been very clear that we do not expect there to be a kind of preemptive government set up in Kabul, that this is for the United Nations and for Afghanistan’s neighbors and near neighbors to work with all Afghan elements so that we can have a stable government there,” National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We believe that the Northern Alliance understands that, and they’re going to respect that.”

The 87-year-old former king had refused to send delegates to a meeting in Kabul unless it was controlled by a neutral peacekeeping force. Aides said he probably would send representatives to the initial talks rather than attend himself.

Diplomats and experts agreed that speed is critical.

“It’s absolutely essential,” said Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi, spokesman for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

A Pakistani-based Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added: “This meeting has to happen in days, not weeks. There is a real worry about a consolidation of power by the Northern Alliance.”

Observers in Pakistan say military successes by the Northern Alliance, a fractious coalition of ethnic, religious and militia groups, have had the effect of pushing tribal leaders of Afghanistan’s dominant Pushtun ethnic group to present a united front. However, that might not last long.

Local Pushtun leaders also have begun to seize power in their areas, and, as they do, their political flexibility has diminished.

Rifaat Hussain, chairman of the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, said those Pushtun tribal leaders who managed to win power locally would seek to keep it, while those who lost out would want a stronger central government.

“If you delay, you risk a slide back into the rule of warlords,” Hussain said.

Vendrell said he hoped to meet Sunday night with the Northern Alliance’s top commander, Gen. Mohammed Qassim Fahim, considered the real power in the alliance because he has the most loyalty from commanders and troops.

Some alliance commanders, whose authority and wealth stem from the barrel of a gun, are reluctant to give up their battlefield gains or face the foreign troops sent in to maintain stability.

There are 85 British special forces soldiers based at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, with the stated mission of making the airport safe for relief flights. But the alliance, which took control of Kabul despite a plea from President Bush to stay out, has insisted that there is no need for more foreign troops.

“We have enough soldiers for ensuring the security of Afghans in Kabul,” said Gen. Sayed Hussain Muradi, who is responsible for security in Kabul’s Barchi district, which is predominantly ethnic Hazara.

Muradi also said the alliance could never compromise on such a fundamental issue as where the political talks should be held.

“Because the capital of Afghanistan is Kabul and Kabul has been cleared from international terrorists, it is better every kind of talking be done here,” he said.

But Abdullah, the foreign minister, offered compromises.

In addition to his comments on the venue for power-sharing talks, he told reporters that his government had agreed to “the presence of British troops in Bagram at this stage.”

The Northern Alliance has gone to great lengths to appear united as it maneuvers for advantage before negotiations on a new government. Local commanders such as Muradi often sit through interviews with aides who whisper answers to questions on sensitive issues to make sure that they remain “on message.”

Muradi, who serves in a small, predominantly Hazara faction headed by Sayed Hussain Anwari, got help fielding political questions from Mohammed Ehsan Sadat, who described himself as “a consultant.”

Other Northern Alliance forces and anti-Taliban tribal groups continued to battle the Taliban around the regime’s strongholds of Kunduz and Kandahar.

“The Taliban are asking for a corridor to let them escape to Pakistan or Kandahar,” said Kadamshoh, a Northern Alliance general near Kunduz. “But naturally, we won’t agree to that.”

He said 300 fighters on the Taliban side, all Afghans, surrendered in the village of Devairon, eight miles from Kunduz; but he said he believed that about 5,000 fighters from Pakistan and Arab countries were determined to fight until death.

Faziljan, 28, the leader of a unit of alliance fighters near the Kunduz front, said his men were prepared to accept a surrender of Afghan fighters but wanted to shoot any Arabs or Pakistanis, even if they threw down their guns.

In the capital, Northern Alliance power appeared more entrenched with each day.

Alliance commanders and officials have gone through the best Kabul neighborhoods looking for houses to take over, just as the Taliban did after seizing the capital in 1996. A few have inherited the Taliban’s black Mercedes-Benz limousines and luxury sport-utility vehicles.

The alliance has moved its administration from the Panjshir Valley to Kabul, and officials who once worked from sparsely furnished homes with a few bodyguards now have offices in large complexes.

Privately, foreign diplomats say it is only human to enjoy the spoils of victory after so many years in the wilderness, even if the victors owe their newfound power largely to U.S. bombing.

“That is why we must move quickly,” said one diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the talks. “The longer you sit in your office, the less likely you are to want to vacate it.”

Vendrell’s plan is to create a provisional council that would rule Afghanistan with U.N. assistance, and perhaps an international security force, “which has already begun to arrive,” he said.

France, Jordan and Turkey are among the countries willing to send soldiers, Vendrell said, adding that he has “a feeling quite a number of elements could be here quite soon.”

To be acceptable to Afghans, he said, the international force would have to be low-key. “It should not be terribly visible, it should be disciplined, and it should be effective,” he said.

The council would probably have a fixed term so that a traditional loya jirga, or grand council of religious and tribal elders and other Afghan leaders, could meet within a few months to choose a provisional head of state and government, Vendrell said.

It must have “fair representation” of each ethnic group, the U.N. envoy said. And it would probably govern for a fixed term of two years while a special committee, or another grand council, draws up a new constitution in advance of democratic elections, Vendrell added.

It is an ambitious plan for a country torn by nearly 23 years of war. But Vendrell said he is optimistic that lasting peace will take hold, largely because foreign governments have promised to commit the necessary money and effort.

Dobbins, the U.S. envoy, also completed a brief visit to Pakistan on Sunday before meeting the Northern Alliance foreign minister in Uzbekistan.

He met with Pushtun tribal leaders in the Pakistani frontier city of Peshawar and listened to “a surprising unanimity of views,” according to a source close to the visit. The views included approval for deployment of a multinational military force, excluding troops from neighboring Pakistan and Iran, and strong support for the former king to play some role in forming the new government.

There also appears to be backing for the United States to play a more prominent role.

“Everyone wants the Americans involved,” noted Ahmed Rashid, a respected political analyst. “These factions have seen the might of the United States. They know where the money, the power and the final endorsement of any agreement will come from.”

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Watson reported from Kabul and Marshall from Islamabad. Times staff writers Ronald Brownstein in Washington, Richard Boudreaux in Rome and Robyn Dixon in Bangi, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.