U.N. May Broaden Peace Mission

The Security Council edged closer to broadening the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan beyond Kabul, as top U.N. officials appealed publicly Wednesday for greater protection for returning refugees and aid workers elsewhere in the war-ravaged country.

“Security was the No. 1 preoccupation of everyone we met in Afghanistan,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who returned this week from a tour of Afghanistan and neighboring countries, told the Security Council. Though foreign governments have pledged $4.5 billion for the rebuilding of Afghanistan, delivering this aid may be impossible without armed protection, he said.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the chief U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, who also just returned from meetings with officials there, said he heard demands “even from the warlords” for the deployment of foreign peacekeepers throughout the country.

After closed-door consultations following the open council meeting Wednesday, Brahimi said he is “fairly confident” that members will agree to broaden the peacekeeping mission. “I think they are very sympathetic,” he said.

But U.S. officials cautioned that although the council “wants to be responsive” to requests for an expanded peacekeeping force, the scale and timing of that expansion remain subjects of intensive internal debate.

In December, the Security Council authorized the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in and around Kabul, the capital. The force is commanded by Britain and is scheduled to reach its maximum strength of 5,000 troops within a few weeks.

Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s interim prime minister, asked the Security Council last week to authorize a larger and longer-term peacekeeping mission. His foreign minister later proposed expanding the force to about 20,000 troops, with units stationed in Herat, Kandahar, Jalalabad and Mazar-i-Sharif, as well as Kabul.

Brahimi told the council Wednesday that he and Annan “tend to agree with [the Afghan officials’] demands.”

About 100,000 refugees returned to Afghanistan last month, Brahimi reported, but most came to overcrowded, half-demolished Kabul--”where they feel safe”--instead of to their native villages. The population influx from Pakistan and Iran is expected to intensify during the spring planting season, but if there are no security forces in their home provinces, the returning Afghans will further swell Kabul’s shantytowns, he predicted.

An extension of the mission beyond Kabul and environs--and beyond its original six-month time limit, which expires in May--would require not only the assent of the United States and other veto-wielding Security Council powers, but the support of other governments contributing troops to the effort. Britain plans to relinquish command of the force to Turkey in March.

The Pentagon, concerned that peacekeeping troops might inadvertently interfere with its combat operations in Afghanistan, had strongly opposed an expansion of the British-led multinational force outside the capital area. But State Department officials appear increasingly convinced that the interim government’s survival could depend on a strong international security presence around major cities and transportation routes.

Richard Haass, the State Department’s coordinator for policies affecting Afghanistan, told the World Economic Forum in New York last weekend that he could envision the peacekeeping force growing to 25,000 troops. But another U.S. official cautioned Wednesday that although an expansion on that scale is “an option,” it could be weeks or even months before the Security Council approves the deployment of peacekeepers in other Afghan cities.

Although the U.S. has said it will not contribute troops to the peacekeeping force, President Bush has agreed to have police officers participate in training programs for new Afghan security forces. The British are starting a police training program in Kabul this week, Brahimi noted, and later this month a 600-man Afghan “national guard” unit will begin exercises with peacekeepers.