Tuesday, November 13, 2001

U.S. draws post-war support from U.N.
By Barry Schweid
Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — As rebel forces gained ground against the ruling Taliban, the Bush administration on Monday enlisted the support of seven nations and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to speed efforts to form a new government in Afghanistan.

The aim is a broad-based coalition to take charge in Kabul, possibly including Taliban defectors. The United Nations might take interim control of the capital, and Muslim and non-Muslim nations are likely to join with Turkey in providing peacekeepers, U.S. officials said.

In a declaration, the United States, Russia and six nations that border Afghanistan pledged “to establish a broad-based Afghan administration on an urgent basis.”

For the Bush administration, which took office nine months ago dubious of what it scornfully referred to as “nation-building,” it marked a turnabout in foreign policy.

Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi sat across the table from Secretary of State Colin Powell as they plotted Afghanistan’s future. Iran, itself branded a sponsor of terrorism, is a longtime opponent of the Taliban militia.

Kharrazi expressed Tehran’s regret over the loss of life in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, which launched the U.S.-led war against the Taliban and the al-Queda terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden. Powell thanked him.

Later Monday, a senior U.S. diplomat, James F. Dobbins, planned to fly to Europe and then Central Asia to help fashion a post-Taliban regime in talks with government leaders and heads of Afghan opposition groups.

It is a difficult assignment. The Bush administration has backed the northern alliance, which is carrying the fight to the Taliban and is gaining control of areas in the north. But the alliance is dominated by ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, whose entry into Kabul would upset the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in Afghanistan.

As a result, Powell has proposed the northern alliance not drive into the city and that Kabul function as an “open city” for an interim period.

The top U.N. representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, said he hoped to get “a representative sampling of the Afghan population together to see what kind of interim arrangements we can work together for Kabul,” hopefully within days.

Likely participants with Turkey in a combined peacekeeping force from Muslim and non-Muslim countries include Indonesia, Bangladesh and Jordan, U.S. officials said.

The closed ministerial meeting Monday, in a basement conference room of the U.N. Secretariat building alongside the East River, was held shortly after an American Airlines jet crashed across the river in the Rockaway area of Queens. There was no immediate evidence of a terrorist link.

U.N. headquarters was quickly sealed off, causing Powell to arrive about 15 minutes late for the meeting and the Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar to miss it entirely. His country was represented by a deputy.

Annan said the ministers “stressed the need for speed ... to bring the political aspects in line with the military development on the ground.”

“We have to be nimble,” he said. “We have to be able to move quickly, and we have to be flexible.”

Jack Straw, Britain’s foreign secretary, foresaw in a speech to the U.N. Security Council “the overall liberation of Afghanistan, to the establishment there of a broad-based, representative, multiethnic government, and to our goal of a world free from the twin scourges of terrorism and of war.”

The so-called “Six-plus-Two” committee comprising the United States, Russia and the six Afghan neighbors — Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan — has been trying for years to end war in Afghanistan.