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November 28, 2001
KOENIGSWINTER, Germany -- Weary of war, even one they appear to be winning, Afghanistan's rival factions stunned their hosts and foreign patrons on the first day of U.N.-brokered talks here by broadly agreeing Tuesday on the two crucial issues of securing peace and sharing power.
While contention may still loom as the 30-odd ethnic and political leaders tackle the details of naming an interim post-Taliban government, the usually fractious figures demonstrated unexpectedly common commitment to ending decades of repression and bloodshed.
The Afghan delegates, who only a day earlier were still haggling over who would represent the factions and their relative clout in the negotiations, all gave at least tepid endorsement to the return of the country's deposed king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, as a transitional head of state, U.N. spokesman Ahmed Fawzi said.
The four groups represented were also reported to be close to accepting the concept of a multinational peacekeeping force, rather than the all-Afghan security deployment the Northern Alliance had previously insisted on.
"All four leaders spoke of this meeting as the beginning of a new era for Afghanistan, one that promises dignity and peace for its people," reported Fawzi, who said the faction leaders hailed the talks as "a path toward salvation."
The talks in this spa town near Bonn bring together the political leaders of the Northern Alliance, made up mostly of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, and three ethnic Pashtun-dominated factions of exiles known as the Rome, Cyprus and Peshawar groups. The Rome Group represents allies of the former king, whose return as even a figurehead leader had been rejected by Northern Alliance political leader Burhanuddin Rabbani until a few days ago.
"Even yesterday I was not that hopeful, but today I've come out of our meetings with lots of hope. There's been a big change in the stance of the Northern Alliance," said Fatima Gailani, the Western-educated daughter of Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani, head of the Peshawar Group.
Younis Qanooni, the Northern Alliance's interior minister and head of its delegation, set minds at ease at the start of the talks when he professed his faction "ready for a transfer of power to the real representatives of the Afghan people."
Because Northern Alliance forces now control most of Afghanistan, there had been fears that the battlefield victors would rather sit on their spoils than share power.
The United Nations hopes the talks here will last only three to five days and create an interim administration to govern Afghanistan until spring, Fawzi said.
Then, U.N. organizers hope the Afghans can convene a loya jirga, a council of tribal elders, to name a provisional president and parliament and set out a framework for a democratic constitution. In a year or two, they hope to see elections in which all adults would participate, ending Afghan women's decade of disenfranchisement.
Negotiators reached a general consensus that Zaher Shah, the 87-year-old former monarch who has been living in Rome since his 1973 ouster, should serve as titular head of state until a permanent leader can be chosen.
"Everybody sees the ex-king as a rallying point and hopes that he will be willing and able to play that role," said James Dobbins, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan. "The one element which was common to every group I met with, all four of them, was a common vision of how the king would fit into this."
The principal sticking point at the conference, as it so often has been in the recent history of Afghanistan, is the issue of who would hold real positions of power. Below the king in the U.N. framework would be an executive council of 15 to 20 seats, whose makeup would have to be agreed upon by the competing ethnic groups.
- Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.