Former Afghan president limits UN force to 200 men

Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Islamic fundamentalist who was Afghanistan's last President before the Taliban seized power, said yesterday that his interim government in Kabul would allow a maximum of 200 United Nations peace-keepers to be stationed in the country.

Speaking in the former king's Gul Khana or "Flower Palace'' and thereby subliminally underlining the fact that he remained the President, he denied having any desire to cling to power.

"We did not come to Kabul,'' he said, referring to the Northern Alliance's triumphant roll into the capital on 14 November, " to keep our previous position by force ... to avoid any misunderstanding, we did not assign ministers. To avoid problems we sent caretakers to ministries to solve urgent problems.''

Mr Rabbani insisted his party, Jamiat-i-Slami, was glad to send delegates to the conference in Bonn, even though "we didn't have time to prepare fully". But he revealed differences with the other parties taking part in the conference. "Other parties want matters solved all of a sudden but it is impossible to do it in a short duration," he said. "Choosing the Grand Assembly is a very complicated issue and needs lots of discussion and consultation.''

According to the "road map'' towards a peaceful Afghanistan drawn up by the UN's special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, an emergency Grand Assembly – known here as a Loya Jirga – will lead on to an interim council and a constitutional assembly until Afghanistan has a new constitution, a broad-based government and a national army. But Mr Rabbani's intervention suggested even that first stage will be a major hurdle.

In a phrase that baffled many at the conference, he said: "We decided that election for the Loya Jirga may be related to the population of the country in a just way. The previous way of organising Loya Jirga'' [by the choice of the King, as convenor of the event] is not practical because it is not through the votes of the people.''

Mr Rabbani's reference to elections by popular vote – women, he said, could both vote and stand for election – raised more questions than it answered. How elections could be organised in a country where a census has not been held in decades, and where bandits and heavily armed mujahedin control the highways, was not a subject on which Mr Rabanni would be drawn.

UN peace-keepers, however, let alone a multinational force, were not the solution he favoured. He suggested "100 to 200 UN peacekeepers'' might be invited to "keep security'' during the Grand Assembly. "More than 200 is not acceptable'' he added, "and not needed.''

Mr Rabbani said he hoped to improve his regime's relations with Pakistan and will meet Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, in Iran. He rejected the idea of the former King, Zahir Shah, who was ousted in 1974, returning to convene the Loya Jirga. "People who will be leaders should be elected by the votes of the people,'' he insisted. "If Zahir Shah or another person is elected I will respect his position [but] the royal system is being abolished throughout the world, so why do we desire such a set up?''