Bonn | Wednesday
RIVAL Afghan groups meeting in Germany struck a historic UN-sponsored power-sharing accord Wednesday, agreeing on who will serve in an interim government, the United Nations announced.
UN representative Ahmad Fawzi said the 29-member executive cabinet, which will rule Afghanistan for the next six months, is to be headed by the royalist ethnic Pashtun tribal leader Hamid Karzai.
The 44-year-old former deputy foreign minister, currently on the battlefield fighting the Taliban around the southern city of Kandahar, is an ally of the exiled Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah.
Fawzi, the representative for UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, also said that three key posts were being retained by the powerful Northern Alliance.
He said the Alliance’s foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, interior minister Yunus Qanooni and defence minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim would all keep their jobs.
”The incumbents will continue to hold these ministries,” Fawzi said.
The three ethnic Tajiks are from the main faction within the Northern Alliance, and were all close aides to the assassinated legendary resistance commander Ahmad Shah Masood.
The Alliance, whose forces control Kabul and much of the rest of the country, has thus achieved its aim of holding the three posts.
The Tajiks are in a minority compared with the Pashtun, the traditional rulers of Afghanistan.
But the nomination of Karzai and the unifying role that the former king is now expected to play are seen as helping reconcile the Pashtuns to the transitional arrangements pending elections in some three years’ time.
The ousted Taliban regime drew much of its support from the Pashtun.
The United Nations has been very concerned with such ethnic considerations in the choice of the names for the interim cabinet, as well as professional competence and moral integrity.
”The most important thing we’re trying to achieve is ethnic balance,” Fawzi said Tuesday as the conference struggled to finalise the composition.
There was no immediate indication whether Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani would play any role in the new administration, but the United Nations has appealed to him to cooperate and allow the successful implementation of the accord.
After days of digging in his heels over a deal, Rabbani, the Northern Alliance’s old-guard president, finally agreed to rubber-stamp his camp’s nominations and effectively sign away his status as titular head of state.
At least one woman is in the interim government: Sima Samar has been chosen as one of five vice-presidents, said Abdul Sattar Sirat, the head of the so-called Rome delegation representing supporters of the ex-king.
In a brief statement given by telephone from the Petersberg hill-top government residence where exhausted delegates have been locked in discussions for the past eight days and nights, Fawzi said the historic accord was to be signed at 9:20 am (0820 GMT) on Wednesday.
He also said the interim government will take over the running of Afghanistan on December 22.
The interim authority will govern Afghanistan for a six-month period, before an emergency Loya Jirga — or grand traditional assembly of elders — in turn appoints an 18-month transitional government.
Under the terms of their accord, former king Mohammed Zahir Shah gets a symbolic role, presiding over the Loya Jirga.
The accord provides for the deployment of an international security force in Kabul and its surrounding area.
The seven-page UN blueprint for a post-Taliban Afghanistan is designed to put the country on a road to general elections and ”a broad-based, gender-sensitive, multi-ethnic and fully representative government.”
The four Afghan groups, including the Northern Alliance and the camp of ex-king Zahir Shah, had been in intensive negotiations at the secluded and heavily-guarded residence outside the former West German capital since November 27.
Among those to attend the signing ceremony on the Petersberg overlooking the Rhine near Bonn was German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder as well as his Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. Fischer attended the opening too and also played an important role during the landmark encounter. – Sapa-AFP