Groups Hold Talks on Afghan Gov't
By KATHY GANNON
Associated Press Writer
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan confirmed Saturday that it was holding talks with a senior Taliban commander on the makeup of a future Afghan government -- a move that drew a sharp retort from the opposition alliance that is fighting the Islamic militia in the north.
Pakistan is trying to court Taliban figures who might be acceptable candidates in a new government if the ruling militia collapses under the U.S. military assault.
It wants to ensure that the next government includes members favorable to Pakistan, which had been the Taliban's closest ally until last month's terrorist attacks in the United States but now backs the U.S.-led anti-terrorism campaign.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan confirmed at a news conference Saturday that key officials were meeting in Pakistan with Mullah Jalaluddin Haqqani, a major Taliban commander in Khost province, to discuss participation in a broad-based replacement government.
Pakistan's contact with Taliban figures enraged the northern alliance, which fears Islamabad could convince the United States to sideline the opposition if the Taliban fall.
The opposition's fears increased Tuesday when Secretary of State Colin Powell said in Pakistan that the United States would be open to contacts with certain Taliban moderates once the regime collapsed.
In Tajikistan's capital, Dushanbe, the foreign minister of the exiled Afghan government of Burhanuddin Rabbani dismissed any Taliban participation in a future administration.
"There are no moderate Taliban," Abdullah, who uses one name, said Saturday. "The term 'moderate' does not apply to the Taliban. The Taliban have as their international agenda cruelty and terrorism."
Abdullah spoke after meeting German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who said he agreed.
"We discussed the military and political situation in Afghanistan in detail and agreed that there must not be a solution to the Afghan problem with Taliban," Fischer said.
Haqqani, however, showed no signs of switching allegiances and was quoted by a Pakistani newspaper as saying he was eagerly awaiting the fight against U.S. ground troops.
Haqqani was a leading commander during the 1979-1989 war against Soviet invaders and was even received at the White House by President Ronald Reagan. The Cold War-era United States backed fighters who battled the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.
Last week, Pakistani sources said Taliban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil made a secret trip to Islamabad and asked Pakistan to urge the United States to slow its bombing campaign to give Taliban moderates time to reassess their refusal to hand over terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden.
Both Muttawakil and Haqqani have showed no public sign of breaking with the Taliban's hard-line leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Haqqani told the Pakistani newspaper that the Taliban were "eagerly awaiting the American troops" so they can "deal with them in our own way."
Muttawakil, who was even rumored to have defected, returned to Afghanistan, where he said there was no truth to rumors of divisions in Taliban ranks, nor to reports circulated by the opposition that key tribal leaders were joining the northern alliance.
Western diplomatic sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it appeared that no major figure within the Taliban has publicly switched sides, although they did not rule out that some minor figures in remote areas may have made overtures to the opposition.
In an interview published Saturday by the Pakistani newspaper The News, Haqqani said there was "absolutely no truth" to claims of defections. He did not explain why he was in Pakistan, but he said that any "broad-based government" which was secular rather than Islamic "will never be acceptable to the Afghans."
"No one from the Taliban will be a part of such an unacceptable government which will be filled with American, Russian and Indian stooges," he said.
Pakistan insists the opposition -- mostly ethnic minority Tajiks and Uzbeks -- would never win acceptance by the Pashtun majority, the backbone of the Taliban. Many Pashtuns live on the Pakistani side of the border and maintain close ties with their ethnic kinsmen in Afghanistan.
Many key figures in the alliance have been discredited because of the anarchy which swept Afghanistan after they took power in 1992. Factions now allied in the opposition battled in Kabul, destroying the capital and killing an estimated 50,000 people, mostly civilians.
That enabled the Taliban to oust them from power in 1996.
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