Hi all; US wants Afghan king back until elections:
US wants Afghan king back in Kabul
Times of India, September 21, 2001
LONDON: The Americans and a key NATO ally, possibly Britain, are pressing much of Europe to support plans for a “post-Taliban Afghanistan” governed by its 86-year-old exiled king Zahir Shah and a UN-led interim administration.
The revelations, which figure in The Guardian newspaper, quote secret diplomatic documents to say the US “is bent on force to evict the Taliban from power” and will not stop at finding Osama bin Laden and destroying his training camps. The documents quote the US administration as canvassing the views of the allies after “the liberation” of Afghanistan.
In a BBC interview on Friday, British foreign secretary Jack Straw refused to discuss “secret memos”, but confirmed that the coalition of nations engaged in “the war on terrorism” were keen to ensure Afghanistan had a proper government. The king, who was overthrown in 1973, is said to have already told the Italian authorities that he is willing to fill the void if the Taliban is toppled.
Reports say he plans to call on the Afghan tribes to rise up against the Taliban. Three days ago, he pleaded with his countrymen far away to “rescue themselves” by renouncing terrorism. He has said he wants to be a head of state until free elections are held in Afghanistan. The paper says the king is one of the “planks” of American “strategy to depose the Taliban regime (which) is based on more than military thinking”.
Analysts say the revelations are typical of superpower foreign policy, which has something of a record in creating well-funded puppet administrations that later bedevil the region.
The pundits add, Washington does seem to be altering the script this time because they want the Europeans to agree to plans to offer a key role to the UN. This may indicate “a major change of US policy,” say some European diplomats, indicating the broadness of the coalition being assembled by the Americans and the British.
Reports say that Washington is paying for and organising the visit to Rome of several members of the Northern Alliance, the Taliban opposition forces, for talks with Zahir Shah.
Meanwhile, in the clearest indication yet that the American coalition will be the broadest possible, Britain has emerged as the channel of communication between the US and Iran.
Straw has announced a hasty and unscheduled visit to Teheran early next week, the first such high-level contact between Iran and Britain since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
On Friday, the British prime minister was shoring up support for the Americans at a special crisis meeting of all 15 European Union leaders in Brussels.
timesofindia.com
This actually makes sense to me.
-- Carl |
