Afghanistan's Northern Alliance confirmed today it could accept an international peacekeeping force as part of an overall transition plan being worked out at UN-sponsored talks in Bonn.
Yunis Qanuni, Alliance delegation head, told journalists he was more optimistic about a deal at the closed-door talks after progress he said had been made in intensive consultations with three Afghan exile groups.
Once a transitional mechanism is established in Afghanistan and it requires the presence of an international peacekeeping force, we will not oppose that, said Qanuni, who is also the Alliance interior minister and responsible for security in the capital Kabul.
The people of Afghanistan would prefer if the international forces come from Islamic countries, he added. The Alliance has previously been reluctant to accept the foreign force that the other three factions at the talks have demanded.
Speaking about the talks, where the Alliance was reported to have agreed with the royalist delegation on the broad outlines of a deal on governing post-Taliban Afghanistan, Qanuni said: "We have had more progress in our talks. Today I am more optimistic."
Asked whether the peacekeepers would be confined to Kabul, Qanuni said they should not be.
Under a deal proposed by the Alliance and the group representing the former king, the Bonn conference would name a commission of about 20 people to draw up a list of up to 200 members for an interim parliament due to sit for about two years.
This assembly would choose its own executive government for the interim period, during which it would write a new constitution. Once that is done, elections would be held.
The potentially thorny issue of a role for former king Zahir Shah also seemed closer to resolution. The factions generally agreed he could return, possibly as the figurehead chairman of the interim parliament, rather than the head of the constitutional monarchy he held until being deposed in 1973.
The Alliance is the largest delegation at the talks, followed by the former king’s Rome group and two small delegations known as the Peshawar and Cyprus groups backed by Pakistan and Iran.