Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (41784)	11/19/2001 8:09:13 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

Latest..Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance inched closer Monday to backing a UN blueprint for setting up an interim post-Taliban government, but a senior official warned that some disagreements remained. The alliance’s acting interior minister Younis Qanooni told AFP that talks with UN envoy Francesc Vendrell had focused on ‘a mechanism for the interim government.’ ‘In principle we agreed to that, but on the details we have some observations, and we are going to inform Vendrell about that tomorrow (Tuesday) morning,’ Qanooni said. Spearheading the diplomatic push to broker all-party talks in a neutral country — possibly Germany or Austria — Vendrell discussed the UN plan Monday with ousted Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The senior UN diplomat has invited the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, which seized control of the Afghan capital in dramatic fashion a week ago, to meet ethnic Pashtun leaders and other Afghan factions at the summit. Vendrell’s spokesman Eric Falt confirmed Monday that the UN delegation expected a response from the Northern Alliance by Wednesday when Vendrell is due to fly out of Kabul. ‘We hope to have the response from the United Front no later than Wednesday,’ Falt said, before adding: ‘There is no deadline for the answer to the question.’ The alliance had previously insisted that any inter-Afghan conference be held in Kabul, but on Sunday its representative to United Nations, Haron Amin, said it would be amenable to a European venue. ‘I spoke to our foreign minister, Dr (Abdullah) Abdullah, this morning, and he mentioned that our delegation should be heading — hopefully soon — into Europe,’ Amin told CBS television, naming Germany as a possible host country. The flurry of diplomatic activity in Kabul coincided with the first signal from some Taliban officials that they would consider participating in any new national administration. ‘They have agreed to national reconciliation and to the establishment of a national government,’ said Hamid Karzai, a US-backed Pashtun elder and royalist politician who is trying to win over ‘moderate’ Taliban. But he declined to give the names ‘for the time being’ of the Taliban officials concerned because it ‘could endanger their safety.’ The Northern Alliance is opposed to any Taliban participation. Some Western diplomats have voiced concern that Rabbani and the alliance would be reluctant to surrender the reins of power in Kabul. However, on returning to Kabul, Rabbani immediately sought to dispel fears that his return could result in more bloodshed and tribal feuding. ‘We didn’t come to Kabul to extend our government. We came to Kabul to call for peace,’ the deposed president was quoted as saying Sunday. Rabbani has pledged to ‘try to form a broad-based government as soon as possible,’ on the grounds that the victory over the Taliban ‘does not belong to one ethnic group but to all Afghan people’. However, Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, is unacceptable to the majority of Pashtuns who remember that his four years at the helm were marked by brutal infighting between many of the groups that now form the Northern Alliance.