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NA Troops Withdraw From Kabul, No Extension of Interim Set Up
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| Afghan Police and U.N. Force to patrol Kabul |
With additional reporting by, Aamir Latif
KABUL, Jan. 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Northern Alliance troops started withdrawing from Kabul Friday on the orders of Afghanistan's interim government, as Deputy Chairman of the interim government said that the tenure of interim setup would not extend the six months period agreed in Bonn last month, news agencies reported.
"What the interim administration has said is those people who are from outside Kabul should return from whence they came," said Major Guy Richardson, the British spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported Friday.
"This, from HQ-ISAF perspective, is good because they [the interim administration] are taking it a stage further than what is specified in the MTA [military technical agreement]."
Afghan Interior Minister, Yunus Qanooni, on Wednesday ordered the Afghan military to quit Kabul within three days and leave security duties in the capital to Afghan police and the international peacekeeping force.
At Bala-e-hisar Fort southeast of the capital, Jan Mohammad, 38, a deputy to commander Haji Mohammad Almas, told AFP Friday that troops were withdrawing from the center of Kabul.
"Yes, it's the last day and it will be finished," he said.
Brigadier Mohamad Ghani said most of the troops under his command were withdrawing to Parwan Province northwest of Kabul, and to Logar province to the south.
"We have most of our soldiers in Logar now on a security mission," Ghani said.
Two barracks, visited by AFP journalists, were empty, which appeared to confirm that only military units authorized to remain in Kabul were doing so.
Meanwhile, after his meeting with his Pakistani counterpart in Islamabad, Afghanistan’s Finance Minister and Deputy Chairman of the interim government, Hedayat Amin Arsala, told reporters: “We will complete the political process in six months.”
“We will have a loya jirga (Grand Assembly) so that people of Afghanistan could decide what kind of government they want,” he added.
In answer to a question, the American-national Arsala, who had been Finance Minister in the first Afghan cabinet after the ouster of Najeebullah government in 1991, said that Pakistan and Afghanistan would have a productive relationship in the future.
Arsala, who left for Dubai Friday morning, said it would require a long time to bring Afghanistan’s devastated economy back to normal.
In the next 5 to 10 years, he said, Afghanistan needs substantial foreign funding to reconstruct the country's entire infrastructure, devastated by years of long war against invading Russian forces and civil war.
Pakistani Finance Minister, Shaukat Aziz, said that Pakistan would support Afghanistan’s reconstruction program.
Earlier, Pakistan and Afghanistan discussed bilateral relations and matters of mutual interest during the meeting between visiting Afghan Finance Minister and Foreign Minister, Abdul Sattar.
The foreign minister reiterated Pakistan’s continued support for the restoration of durable peace, reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan, a foreign office statement said.
The Afghan minister expressed satisfaction over the visit of a Pakistan delegation to Kabul for talks on reopening of diplomatic missions of the two countries in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Arsala’s visit is the first of an Afghan minister to a foreign country since the establishment of the new government on December 22, 2001.
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