Americans Meet Ex-Afghan King

Afghanistan’s former king, who is trying to assemble a broad coalition of Afghans against the Taliban regime, told visiting U.S. lawmakers Sunday that he would welcome foreign military intervention to help his group take power.

Mohammed Zahir Shah won effusive backing for his effort from the 11 members of Congress, some of whom also promised U.S. aid to rebuild Afghanistan if opposition forces overthrow the Taliban and rid the country of terrorists.

“The king’s plan is a well-thought-out one,” Rep. Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican heading the bipartisan group, told reporters after the private meeting. “And from what we are hearing, he is perhaps the only person who can bring the Afghan people together. We will assist that effort in any way that we can.”

Zahir Shah, who introduced a constitutional monarchy during his 40-year reign, has lived in Italy since his 1973 ouster opened the way for decades of conflict in Afghanistan. Now 86, he has emerged as a popular figurehead since Sept. 11, when terror attacks on the United States brought the threat of U.S. retaliation against the Taliban. Washington has named Saudi militant Osama bin Laden, who has been given sanctuary by the Taliban, as the prime suspect in the attacks.

Envoys from the United States, Britain, Japan, the European Parliament and the United Nations have called on Zahir Shah to discuss the future of his homeland.

The former monarch has urged the convening of a loya jirga, a grand assembly of elders, to unite the country’s tribes behind a provisional government that would replace the Taliban and rid the country of Bin Laden’s terrorist network. The government would run Afghanistan for two years and then hold democratic elections.

On Sunday, Zahir Shah met jointly with the U.S. delegation and members of the main anti-Taliban armed movement, the Northern Alliance, under tight security at his villa in Olgiata, a gated suburb north of Rome.

“We have a common struggle against terrorism,” he said as he greeted them.

His talks with the Northern Alliance continued after the U.S. lawmakers left. The alliance could lend crucial authority to Zahir Shah’s proposed assembly, but it has not yet agreed to take part. Its militias control about 5% of Afghanistan’s territory, and some of its leaders are said to be jealous of the ex-king’s rising profile.

The head of the Northern Alliance delegation, Younis Qanooni, said he was “optimistic that something good will come out” of the meeting, “but we are still talking about details.”

Weldon said both the former king and the Northern Alliance are courting foreign military intervention. Zahir Shah, he said, prefers a force led by the United Nations but “left the door open that, if the U.N. could not agree, that a U.S.-led force of allies would liberate his country.”

The congressman said he would pass on the Afghans’ ideas to the Bush administration.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) went further, promising that the United States would remain engaged in Afghanistan if the Taliban is unseated. He said Washington did not do enough to help Afghans after Soviet forces, battered by the U.S.-financed moujahedeen, withdrew from the war-ravaged country in 1989.

“We left them to sleep in their own rubble,” he said. “We left them to suffer, and what emerged? The Taliban emerged. What emerged after that? Bin Laden.”

In Afghanistan, the reemergence of the long-ignored and reclusive former king has not gone unnoticed. Taliban authorities arrested six people Sunday for distributing pamphlets calling for his return, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar warned Zahir Shah on Sunday not to meddle in Afghanistan’s affairs. “Forget Afghanistan. You won’t be able to solve the issue of Afghanistan in your lifetime,” Omar said in a radio broadcast monitored by Reuters news agency. “How dare you think you can return to Afghanistan backed by the United States?”