Afghans at Summit Pick a Premier

After settling on the form, duties and timetable of a postTaliban administration, four Afghan factions chose an interim prime minister early today and neared final agreement on a 29-member multiethnic council to guide their country toward peaceful democratic rule.

The delegates chose Hamid Karzai, a 46-year-old tribal leader who has been fighting the Taliban, to head the council as prime minister. They named a woman to be one of his top deputies and to head a newly created ministry of women’s and children’s affairs, U.N. officials said.

Bargaining over leadership posts, which started in earnest Tuesday with 150 nominees, was nearly complete by 6:45 a.m. today, when the delegates told chief U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi that they were in agreement over all but a few names.

“The parties have made progress toward whittling down the list and agreeing on the head of the interim administration,” U.N. spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said.

A full accord, aimed at ending Afghanistan’s nearly 23 years of war, was expected to be signed this morning at a ceremony at the hilltop resort where the talks began nine days ago.

Germany had tentatively scheduled a 9:30 a.m. signing ceremony today, hoping to prod the Afghans to finish their work. Would-be international donors to Afghanistan are to gather in Berlin this afternoon, with Western officials warning that no significant aid will flow until a new, broad-based Afghan government is in power.

U.N. officials had been upbeat as the delegates began their final round of talks. Fawzi said they had experienced “over the past few days a reconciling of positions . . . a meeting of the minds on the necessity to get this administration up and running.”

The U.N.-sponsored effort cleared a major hurdle late Monday when Burhanuddin Rabbani, whose claim to the Afghan presidency would be abolished by an accord here, agreed to submit his Northern Alliance delegation’s list of nominees for posts in the new administration.

Soon after, at 1 a.m. Tuesday, the 38 delegates--representing the alliance, the country’s deposed king and exiles based in Pakistan and Iran--erupted in cheers and congratulatory handshakes as they completed work on a seven-page text charting what Fawzi called “a road map to a free and independent Afghanistan.”

According to the draft, the 29-member ruling council would serve for up to six months while a 21-member commission, to be picked by the council, appoints a supreme court and organizes an emergency loya jirga, a traditional assembly of ethnic and provincial leaders.

The loya jirga, convened by the 87-year-old exiled king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, would then pick a new executive and legislature to run the country for up to two years while a new constitution is written, another loya jirga is called and elections are held.

An annex of the draft accord formally asks the U.N. Security Council to deploy an international peacekeeping force to help the new administration keep order in Kabul, the Afghan capital, and train a new Afghan police force and army. Western officials said France is drafting a Security Council resolution authorizing such a force, which Britain is prepared to organize.

Afghanistan has been torn apart over the last generation--by a decade of embattled Soviet occupation, a civil war, five years of repressive Islamist rule by the Taliban militia and the entrenchment of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network, culminating with the Sept. 11 attacks on America.

The United States, Russia and Afghanistan’s neighbors are backing the U.N.-sponsored talks in an effort to achieve a stable regime in Kabul that is committed to fighting terrorism and cooperating with the outside world.

As Afghan negotiators sat down to work Tuesday afternoon at the resort overlooking the Rhine, two elements of a full power-sharing agreement were still missing--the names of all the ruling council’s members and the date they will take power in Kabul.

A target date, Dec. 22, was penciled in as U.N. officials tried to contact Rabbani in Kabul to get an agreement on when he would vacate the presidential palace. Fawzi appealed to the 61-year-old religious scholar to continue supporting the U.N.-led transition “until the successful conclusion of the transfer of power.”

Rabbani returned to Kabul on Nov. 17, four days after U.S. airstrikes drove out the Taliban and enabled his Northern Alliance troops to take over the capital. He served as president during the 1992-96 civil war that ended with the radical Islamic movement’s takeover.

Since the talks began here Nov. 27, Rabbani has often pledged to respect a final decision while maneuvering repeatedly to stall one, according to Western officials. His concession late Monday came after a telephone call from German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

“We are so close to an agreement,” one official quoted Fischer as telling Rabbani. “We have a window of opportunity that may not come again.”

By early Tuesday, Brahimi had Rabbani’s list of more than 60 nominees to sit on the interim ruling council along with about 90 from the three other groups.

In return, delegates here added a sentence to the preamble of the draft accord expressing “deep appreciation” to Rabbani for his service to the nation.

Brahimi spent much of the day shuttling among the four factions and paring the list down to one choice for each of the 29 positions--one prime minister, five deputy prime ministers and 23 other members. The factions came together late Tuesday to begin debate on--and possibly to revise--his picks.

The Algerian mediator’s choices weren’t made public. But Karzai, a warlord who is now fighting the Taliban in its besieged stronghold of Kandahar, emerged as the consensus choice for prime minister after his chief rival, former Justice Minister Abdul Sattar Sirat, dropped out of the running.

Karzai is prominent in the Popolzai clan, part of the Durrani tribe that has been linked to the Afghan royal dynasty since the 1700s. They are part of the Pushtun ethnic group, which is the dominant one in the country and in the Taliban. His father was once the speaker of parliament.

He has been pursued by the Taliban in the southern portion of the country.

The Northern Alliance--a coalition led by Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and other ethnic minorities--was seeking to maintain its de facto hold on three key ministries it has run since capturing Kabul: foreign affairs, defense and interior.

The draft accord called for a “broad-based, gender-sensitive government,” and Brahimi was concerned about ethnic balance as well as professional competence. U.N. officials said a woman, identified as Sima Samar, got one of five deputy prime minister jobs.

The empowerment of women is another departure from the Taliban era, when women were barred from working and had to be covered in public.

Samar, a medical doctor, has legal U.S. residence in Virginia but spends much of her time running a relief organization for Afghan refugees in Quetta, Pakistan. She is an ethnic Hazara who was nominated for the post by the exiled king’s predominantly Pushtun faction.