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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Condor who wrote (6207)	10/19/2001 8:27:22 AM
From: John Carragher	Respond to of 281500

European Diplomats Convene in Rome To Back Alternate Afghan Government By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ROME -- As the U.S. intensifies its airstrikes against Afghanistan's Taliban regime, Western diplomats are patiently working here to create an alternative government around the former Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir. The aim is to proclaim some sort of authority as soon as next week, offering an acceptable substitute in places where Taliban power crumbles, a senior European diplomat involved in shepherding the process said. "The power vacuum can emerge very quickly, and this would cause huge trouble," he said. While initially the talks centered on convening a loya jirga, a large gathering of tribal and ethnic chiefs that would be impossible outside Afghanistan, the focus shifted to forming a much narrower group after a meeting Monday between the former king and the foreign ministers of Italy and France, Renato Ruggiero and Hubert Vedrine. This plan for a transitional administration, symbolically headed by the ex-king and including about a dozen people representing all of Afghanistan's major ethnic groups, enjoys enthusiastic backing from Europe. The U.S. "has neither bought nor rejected" the proposal, a person familiar with the situation said, but is largely sympathetic to such an effort. Rome is the center of negotiations because Shah Zahir, 87 years old, has been living in a villa on the city's outskirts since he was ousted in a 1973 coup. The U.S. State Department head of policy planning, Richard Haass, met with the former king here early this month. The U.S. launched its military campaign against the Taliban on Oct. 7, after the radical-Islamic group refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile the U.S. suspects of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks that killed thousands of people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. No decision on forming a new Afghan administration is expected until a three-person delegation of the Northern Alliance -- the coalition, mostly made up of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, that controls parts of northeastern Afghanistan -- makes it to Rome for the latest round of talks. The former king, like a majority of Afghans and the Taliban leadership itself, belongs to the Pashtun ethnic group. "Right now, it's simply a bit difficult for the envoys to get out of Afghanistan, because of the circumstances," said Hamidullah Nasser-zia, the Afghan ambassador to Italy. Yet Mr. Nasser-zia, who like most Afghan diplomats abroad represents the Northern Alliance, said the delegation -- whose composition is secret -- is expected to arrive in Rome just days from now. The former king has also dispatched a delegation to Pakistan to negotiate alliances with more-moderate elements within the Taliban, diplomats said. Pakistan, whose airspace U.S. jets cross en route to Afghanistan, is an indispensable partner for Washington in the campaign. But the nation, where millions of Afghan refugees live, is openly hostile to the Northern Alliance and is the only country in the world that still diplomatically recognizes the Taliban. Separately, the foreign minister of Tajikistan, Afghanistan's northern neighbor, Thursday rejected a suggestion made Tuesday by Secretary of State Colin Powell that there might be a place for moderate members of the Taliban in a new Afghan government. "There are no good and bad [members] of the Taliban," Mr. Nasarow, in Vienna on an official visit, told the Austria Press Agency. "The ideology is the same." Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com