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Bonn Accord Ready for Signing Tuesday
BONN, Dec. 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Afghan groups at talks in Germany have agreed on a U.N.-brokered power-sharing deal and will sign it in Bonn Tuesday, a Northern Alliance source told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"A complete agreement has been reached. It will be signed tomorrow," said the source, who requested anonymity.
A diplomatic source close to the talks also confirmed that the final draft of a seven-page text, which envisages - among other things - an interim administration for Afghanistan, had been finalized.
The details of some amendments, added the same source, still had to be incorporated into a clean text in English, Pashto and Dari, explaining that the translation work was a lengthy and laborious process.
"We've finalized the text but not in the details," the diplomat said. The Northern Alliance source said it had been agreed that the royalists would head the interim administration for six months.
The three other groups negotiating for the last seven days near Bonn - the Northern Alliance and the Cyprus and Peshawar groups - would have the other ministries, he said.
"They [the ex-king's entourage] will head the government. The ministries will be given to the Northern Alliance and the other groups according to their weights," the Northern Alliance source said.
The diplomatic source close to the talks said the United Nations, which is sponsoring the negotiations, had still not received a list of nominees for government posts from the Northern Alliance.
But the Northern Alliance source predicted that naming people to the ministries would not prove a problem. He explained that the question was rather one of quotas for the different groups.
The Northern Alliance and the royalist Rome delegation have already agreed on the name of Abdul Sattar Sirat for the post of Prime Minister of the interim government.
Earlier Monday, there had been two possible candidates to head the body. They were the leader of the former king's delegation, Sattar Sirat, and Hamid Karzai, an influential Pashtun tribal leader whose forces are presently fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, BBC's online news service reported.
The U.N. spokesman at the conference, Ahmad Fawzi, had said earlier that he doubted there would be an agreement before Tuesday, the BBC said.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Northern Alliance has proposed an interim government that would keep him and his coalition in control of the country for six more months, the
Washington Post reported Monday.
Burhanuddin Rabbani, the alliance's nominal leader who is still recognized by the United Nations as Afghanistan's president, floated the idea, which he had not presented to delegates, in an interview with the U.S. daily.
"Primarily, we'll have an investigation about the people from al-Qaeda because our people must know about this, why they came to Afghanistan to kill our people," Rabbani said in an interview.
"Then we will discuss it with the Americans. We have a cooperation with America, but it's a matter for the future. First we'll have an investigation. Then we'll discuss it," said the 61-year-old theologian, who served as president from 1992 until his ouster by the Taliban in 1996.
Rabbani told the Post that his plan would allay concerns of the Pashtun ethnic group - Afghanistan's largest - by giving a Pashtun leader a position equivalent to that of prime minister.
He expressed his opposition to a substantial role in the government by former king Zahir Shah, insisting that the king be treated as just another participant on the leadership council.
"He can participate, he can have a role here - but as an Afghan, not an extraordinary role," said Rabbani.
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