Dushanbe | Wednesday
OUSTED Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani will return to Kabul on Wednesday to pronounce himself the leader of all territory captured by the anti-Taliban opposition, a senior Afghan envoy here said.
”He will lead the provinces liberated from the Taliban and also head the task of freeing provinces now under the control of the Islamist militia,” said the ambassador for the opposition Northern Alliance in Dushanbe, Said Ibragim Khikmat.
In Kabul, senior alliance leader Younis Qanooni said that Rabbani would be appointed as head of an interim government that he hoped would be formed very soon, ahead of elections in two years’ time.
However, Qanooni insisted that the administration would be broad-based and the Northern Alliance had not reneged on promises to form a national unity council comprised of all ethnic groups in Afghanistan to map out the future.
”For the formation of an interim government, he (Rabbani) will still be called the president of Afghanistan, because he is,” Qanooni said, adding though that the ousted president supported ”the convening of a national unity council.”
Deposed by the Taliban in 1996, Rabbani is the political leader of the Northern Alliance and is still recognized as Afghanistan’s head of state by the United Nations and most countries.
But the international community is concerned that military events have overtaken the political process in Afghanistan after a stunning sweep of opposition victories in recent days that saw Northern Alliance troops capture the capital Kabul from the Taliban Islamic militia on Tuesday.
It has launched urgent diplomatic efforts to put in place a power-sharing government for Afghanistan to avoid the country disintegrating into civil strife and chaos.
The alliance is made up of ethnic minority groups including Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, but has little support from the dominant Pashtun ethnic group represented by the Taliban.
Some of the factions in the alliance shared power with Rabbani’s 1992-96 mujahedin government, when brutal internecine fighting reduced a third of Kabul to rubble.
The proposed unity council has been the centrepiece of efforts to create a new, multi-ethnic and representative government to fill the void left by the collapse of the Taliban Islamic theocracy.
The US-backed process envisages ex-king Mohammed Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since his ouster in a coup in 1973, returning to convene a Loya Jirga, or traditional council of elders. It would decide on a new political setup to ensure a durable peace after two decades of war.
Qanooni said the Northern Alliance was ”not going to repeat the bad experience of monopoly government again because that was fruitless.” – Sapa-AFP