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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, November 24, 2001

Afghan Talks in Bonn Put off by One Day: U.N.

U.N.-sponsored talks in Bonn on a future Afghan government will be postponed for one day after a closed meeting among the various Afghan factions, the United Nations said on Friday. The formal opening of the talks, originally scheduled for Monday, was delayed primarily for logistic reasons.


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U.N.-sponsored talks in Bonn on a future Afghan government will be postponed for one day after a closed meeting among the various Afghan factions, the United Nations said on Friday.

The formal opening of the talks, originally scheduled for Monday, was delayed primarily for logistic reasons, said Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan.

"We want to allow people enough time to arrive," he said. The delay would also allow the 20 to 30 Afghan representatives expected to attend to confer among themselves and with U.N. officials before the formal opening of the conference.

The talks are intended to map out the formation of a new government for the war-ravaged Central Asian nation following the collapse of Taliban rule after an intensive U.S. bombing campaign. Others represented at the conference will be former King Zahir Shah, the Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan who make up most of the population, and some four million refugees mostly living inIran and Pakistan.

Brahimi, the U.N. special representative on Afghanistan, who left New York at the head of a delegation of 15 United Nations officials, will chair the talks, Fawzi said.

The spokesman expected the 20 to 30 Afghan participants to arrive Sunday at Petersberg hotel, the conference center outside Bonn, but he could not yet name any of them, nor say how many would represent each group. "Mr. Brahimi is organizing a conference on Afghanistan for Afghans," he said, adding that "it will be a very flexible, very open conference."

Asked what Brahimi hoped would come out of the talks, he said: "The measure of success will be if we can come up with a formula for a transitional government for Afghanistan."

A German government spokesman said on Friday Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer would attend the opening ceremony at the invitation of the United Nations.




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