BONN/KABUL, 5 December — A blueprint for an interim Afghan government was reached at talks in Germany yesterday, and a new interim government for Afghanistan is expected to be installed in Kabul next week. "The interim government will be installed one week after the signature (of the Bonn accord) and thereupon enjoy international recognition," a Western diplomat among official observers at the conference said. UN officials said they hoped the factions would sign an agreement naming a broad-based 29-member interim Cabinet today.
Southern Afghanistan leader Hamid Karzai, 44, is to be named chief of the nation’s new interim government, United Nations sources said yesterday.
The other major candidate for the post of interim government chief was Abdul Sattar Sirat. A key adviser to the former Afghan king, Muhammad Zahir Shah, Sirat is understood to have withdrawn from the race. The UN-brokered plan will create a Cabinet consisting of an interim head of government, five deputies — including one woman — and 23 Cabinet members.
The government should take power within a week after the four rival factions agree on the names for the new Cabinet.
Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, who is still recognized by the United Nations, is unlikely to have a job in the new administration.
The interim government would serve for six months, by which time a Loya Jirga, a traditional grand assembly, would be held.
This assembly would approve a second stage administration, which would then work on a constitution and prepare elections hoped to be held in about two years.
The accord asks the UN Security Council to consider mandating an international force to Afghanistan to maintain security for the Afghan capital Kabul and surrounding areas.
Exile groups have said they will not return to enter a power-sharing government in Kabul, now firmly in the hands of the Northern Alliance, until a neutral international force is established there to guarantee their safety. The Northern Alliance conceded it would accept peacekeepers if other factions insisted but said it would prefer troops from Muslim countries.
Earlier, Afghan leaders presented a list of more than 120 names to be considered for the 29 posts in the new interim government. After the four Afghan factions attending the conference agreed to an accord setting out the framework for the interim administration, the United Nations was working through the list of names to delete those it does not believe are suitable for government jobs.
While the Northern Alliance has presented 55 names, the so-called Cyprus delegation has submitted a total of 24 names, including eight representing Afghanistan’s Hazara minority.
At the same time, the so-called Peshawar delegation submitted 18 names and the group representing Zahir Shah, presented 33 names.
Meanwhile, Afghan militia forces launched a major operation to encircle the Tora Bora mountain lair of Osama Bin Laden after US warplanes killed his financial manager and wounded — possibly killed — his right-hand man, police and a military commander said yesterday.
Around 1,000 Afghan militia engaged in a brief firefight yesterday with supporters of Bin Laden in an eastern Afghanistan mountain lair where the alleged terrorist is believed to have a hide-out, a local police chief said. The militia had gone to the mountainous Tora Bora area, about 50 kilometers south of the city of Jalalabad, in a bid to encircle hundreds of Al-Qaeda members hiding in a remote tunnel and cave complex in the White Mountains.
Opposition forces, meanwhile, withdrew from Kandahar airport in southern Afghanistan yesterday as United States warplanes continued to pound Taleban positions within the key complex in their last remaining stronghold.
The military commander of Nangarhar province, Haji Muhammad Zaman, said Bin Laden’s top deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, was wounded in a US air raid in the Tora Bora area on Monday and his treasurer, Ali Mahmud, was killed. Ahmad Karzai, brother and spokesman for ethnic Pashtun royalist Hamid Karzai, said his brother’s Popalzai tribal fighters had captured the district of Shahwali Kot on Monday night, meeting little resistance.
