Rabbani Seeks Control of Afghanistan for Six Months

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, December 04, 2001

Rabbani Seeks Control of Afghanistan for Six Months

The leader of the Northern Alliance has proposed an interim government that would keep him and his coalition in control of the country for as long as six more months, the Washington Post reported on Monday.

Burhanuddin Rabbani is the alliance's nominal leader who is still recognised by the United Nations as Afghanistan's president.

Rabbani told the Post that his plan would allay concerns of the Pashtun ethnic group -- Afghanistan's largest -- by giving a Pashtun leader a position equivalent to that of prime minister. He expressed his opposition to a substantial role in the government by former king Zahir Shah, insisting that the king be treated as just another participant on the leadership council. "He can participate, he can have a role here -- but as an Afghan, not an extraordinary role," Rabbani said.

Rabbani also said that if his troops captured accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, Taliban leader Mohammad Omar or top figures of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, he would not turn them over to the United States until after Afghanistan conducted its own investigation.

Rabbani's comments came just two days after Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that Washington expected the Alliance to hand over such figures for trial in US military tribunals if asked to by the United States government.

Rabbani, 61, a Tajik professor of Islamic law led the most effective fighting force during the Soviet war in the 1980s and was Afghan president during most of the 1992-1996 Mujahideen government. But it was the civil war of those years, combined with his refusal to honour a power-sharing deal with the other "holy warrior" parties which helped defeat Moscow, that convinced even some supporters it was time for Rabbani to step aside. His return last month to Kabul sent a shudder through residents who survived the brutal struggle between rival groups which cost some 50,000 lives and reduced the city to ruins.

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