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Breakthrough in Kabul Talks; Deadlock in Kunduz, Kandahar
KABUL, Nov 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Talks on the formation of a broad-based government in Afghanistan achieved a crucial breakthrough Tuesday, in contrast to deadlocked negotiations for the surrender of the last pockets of Taliban resistance.
In Kabul, United Nations special envoy Francesc Vendrell announced that the city's ruling Northern Alliance had finally agreed to attend a conference of various Afghan leaders next week in Germany to discuss proposals for a transitional administration.
After a series of stunning military victories that culminated in the fall of Kabul one week ago, the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance had initially been hesitant about the U.N. plan, prompting concerns that it was unwilling to relinquish its hold on power.
Vendrell said he hoped the talks would take place on Monday, November 26, and would appoint a provisional council, which would then convene in Afghanistan to decide on an interim government.
"We're very hopeful that this acceptance and the meeting in Germany will be the first of very important steps towards achieving the dreams and hopes of all Afghans," he said.
"That is to have a peaceful, united Afghanistan, completely independent, self governing with a government that represents the genuine views of the people."
Vendrell, the deputy to the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, had held several days of talks with alliance leaders, including ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani and defense minister General Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
"This is a difficult time in Afghanistan and the fact that they are willing to travel abroad in these rather challenging circumstances is a signal of flexibility, is a signal that we are in a completely different era, a different period," Vendrell said.
The Northern Alliance had originally wanted the meeting to be held on its turf in Kabul but other delegates and the U.N. preferred a neutral venue to encourage a spirit of pluralism.
The conference in Germany will mark the first step of a five-point U.N. plan for the creation of a new representative government in Afghanistan over the next two years.
In Rome, a spokesman for Afghanistan's exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah - touted as the only figure capable of unifying the country's disparate factions - welcomed the news from Kabul and said a royal delegation would attend next week's talks.
The meeting will appoint a provisional national council under the auspices of Zahir Shah, a Pashtun who ruled Afghanistan for 40 years until his ouster in a 1973 military coup.
The council could then act as a caretaker administration in Kabul, with the recognition of the international community, and lead further discussions on the makeup of an interim government, which would stay in place for around two years.
"We don't want it to be a government forever. After whatever fixed term we decide on, there would be a new constitution drafted. It will be approved. And we will have elections, free elections," Vendrell told CNN.
On the battlefront, efforts to bring about the negotiated surrender of the Taliban's last military holdouts in northern and southern Afghanistan - Kunduz and Kandahar - appeared to be going nowhere.
U.S. warplanes kept up their regular pounding of Taliban positions around Kunduz city, where as many as 30,000 militia troops have been holding out for a week alongside a hardcore component of Arab, Chechen and Pakistani fighters from the al-Qaeda network of suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday reiterated U.S. opposition to a negotiated surrender that would allow foreign nationals fighting alongside the Taliban to walk free from one of the militia's last holdouts in northern Afghanistan.
"It would be most unfortunate if the foreigners in Afghanistan, the al-Qaeda and the Chechens and others who have been there working with the Taliban, if those folks were set free and in any way allowed to go to another country and cause the same kind of terrorist acts," said Rumsfeld.
A Taliban commander has said the militia fighters in Kunduz would only be willing to give themselves up to the besieging Northern Alliance forces under U.N. supervision.
On Monday, Rumsfeld said Washington prefers death or capture, rather than negotiated surrender, for besieged Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and his al-Qaeda backers.
"Would we knowingly allow him [Omar] to get out of Kandahar? The answer is no, we would not," Rumsfeld said.
"The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders. Nor are we in a position, with relatively small numbers of forces on the ground, to accept prisoners."
A Taliban commander has said the militia fighters would only be willing to give themselves up to the besieging Northern Alliance forces under U.N. supervision.
Kenton Keith, the newly installed Islamabad spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said U.S. or British forces would not get involved and could not guarantee the safety of those Taliban who laid down their arms.
There was little sign of progress in similar talks, involving local Pashtun tribal leaders, for the surrender of the Taliban's spiritual home of Kandahar city.
The Taliban's deputy foreign secretary, Najibullah Sherzai, refuted assurances by one tribal leader that an agreement on handing over power in Kandahar was in the offing.
"Our holy war continues... there are no negotiations going on in Kandahar," Sherzai told reporters near the Pakistani border.
The Taliban's foreign ministry spokesman, Maulvi Najibullah, added that the Taliban still had 50,000 regular troops in Kandhar province.
In the neighboring province of Helmand, the Taliban said they had countered an attack by forces loyal to
mujahideen commander Abdul Rehman, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported.
Rehman lost 30 fighters in the failed assault on a Taliban position in Murja, 40 kilometers southwest of the provincial capital Lashkargah, the Pakistan-based AIP quoted a Taliban spokesman as saying.
The bloody roadside slaying of four journalists east of Kabul on Monday highlighted law and order concerns in provinces abandoned by the Taliban.
The victims were identified as an Italian journalist, a Spanish newspaper correspondent and two employees of the British news agency Reuters.
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