Northern Alliance: No peacekeepers

KOENIGSWINTER, Germany -- The Northern Alliance on Wednesday rejected the need for an international peacekeeping force for Afghanistan, a move that dampened expectations for a quick agreement on the future of the country.

At his first news conference in Koenigswinter, Younus Qanooni, head of the Northern Alliance delegation, also downplayed the importance of the former king and said the details of any interim administration will have to be worked out inside Afghanistan and not at the U.N.-sponsored talks.

His statements are likely to disappoint the three other Afghan delegations meeting at a German government guesthouse. Germany was seen by other factions as an important neutral venue.

The first hint that the proceedings might not be as smooth as the bear-hugs of Tuesday's opening ceremony suggested came when a United Nations spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said, "Someone said today that one grain of sand can stop the machine."

James Dobbins, the special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, had said Tuesday that there was an emerging consensus that the 87-year-old former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who was deposed in 1973, could serve as the symbolic head of an administration while the country moves toward free elections in two or three years.

With such a reputedly respected figurehead in place, the details of who gets what in a new administration were expected to be easy to resolve.

But Qanooni, the Northern Alliance's interior minister, struck an occasionally strident tone on matters that are at the heart of the negotiations.

"We don't believe in the role of persons or personalities," Qanooni said. "We believe in the role of systems. . . . If the people agree through a loya jirga, a traditional council, that the king has a role, of course, no one can deny that."

No such loya jirga is anticipated until next spring under a U.N. proposal, and many had hoped that the king, now living in Rome, would quickly emerge as a healing leader through the talks.

Qanooni's comments also seemed to contradict the impressions of other delegates.

"The majority, everyone agrees that whatever (the) procedure, (the king) will be the head of it," said Fatima Gailani, an adviser to the so-called Peshawar exile group, which has strong ties to Pakistan, a traditional enemy of the Northern Alliance. "How much power he will have, we have to discuss this."

A critical issue at the talks is security in Afghanistan. U.S. officials said the alliance is willing to consider foreign forces for pursuing al-Qaida terrorists and having a limited humanitarian role but is balking at a permanent security force.

The alliance is mostly composed of the Tajik, Uzbek and Hazar ethnic groups from central and northern Afghanistan. With U.S. air support, they have swept across large swaths of the country. But for the Pashtun ethnic group, who compose 40 percent of the total population, an international force will check the resurgent power of the alliance.

Aside from the alliance, all the other delegations at the talks -- one around the king, one backed by Pakistan and one backed by Iran, all of them majority Pashtun -- want a multinational force, international observers said.

Humanitarian groups are also pressing for international troops out of concern that large parts of the country are increasingly lawless. The United States has not taken a position on the matter, Dobbins said.

"As we have made it clear in the past, and the present also, we prefer that security is looked after by the Afghan forces themselves, a force composed of different ethnic groups," said Qanooni, who kneaded white prayer beads as he spoke. "We insist on that."

Security worries, and the rise of the Northern Alliance in many parts of Afghanistan, had made other delegations reluctant to negotiate there. They want to thrash out as many details as possible of a power-sharing agreement in Germany and then return to Afghanistan to institute it rather than negotiate at home under the nearby guns of a force they don't entirely trust.

But Qanooni suggested the talks will almost certainly return to Afghanistan without the details of who will sit in a new administration having been established.

"As far as the next round of talks in Afghanistan is concerned," he said, "we would like to have them organized and held in the historic city of Kabul."

Dobbins, despite Qanooni's tone, said the mood for compromise was still strong and the negotiations were still in their early days.

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