Global Policy Forum

By Colum Lynch

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy for Afghanistan, cautioned the Security Council today not to "rush" into Afghanistan with a peacekeeping force that lacks the political and financial support required to succeed.

The remarks reflected mounting concern by the United Nations that the organization may be drawn into a military quagmire in Afghanistan. They also represented a setback for Afghanistan's exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah, a key figure in U.S. efforts to help fashion a new government for Afghanistan should the ruling Taliban militia fall.

Zahir Shah appealed to the council Friday to send U.N. peacekeepers to the country when the U.S.-led airstrike campaign ends.

"We should not rush to establish a peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan," Brahimi told the 15-member council in his first official briefing since being appointed Oct. 3 to coordinate the U.N. policy toward Afghanistan, a council diplomat said. "The council should set achievable and realistic goals."

Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, told the council in a closed-door session that it should concentrate first on accelerating the delivery of humanitarian relief, help the Afghan people establish a broad-based government that is acceptable to neighboring countries, and begin the long and costly task of reconstruction. "We need to move from relief to reconstruction, rehabilitation and development," he said, according to a diplomat who was at the meeting.

Brahimi provided no details of the role the United Nations would play in helping to administer Afghanistan. But some U.N. officials suggested the world body would likely play an advisory role for any new government. They said they did not foresee the establishment of a U.N. protectorate.

These officials also dismissed a proposal under which Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country, would provide most if not all of the troops to any peacekeeping force. One U.N. diplomat said Turkey maintains close ties to an Afghan faction headed by Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek commander allied with the opposition Northern Alliance.

Brahimi is planning to meet with the State Department's newly appointed special envoy to the United Nations, Richard N. Haass, in New York on Thursday before traveling to Washington for talks with U.S. officials. He said he would then travel to the region to begin discussions with Afghan opposition factions and neighboring governments.

One U.S. official said that some sort of U.N. or foreign peacekeeping force for Afghanistan could not be ruled out. But the official signaled that the United States would not impose a plan on the United Nations for rebuilding Afghanistan.

"We are not going to be dominating the postwar phase," John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the council today. Negroponte said the United States would try to help the United Nations increase the distribution of relief to the region. British officials said the effort would focus on opening humanitarian land corridors into territory held by anti-Taliban forces.

Britain's ambassador, Jeremy Greenstock, said the shape of a post-Taliban government is beginning to "jell slowly" around Afghanistan's former 87-year-old king. The ex-king, who was deposed by his brother in 1973, has lived in exile in Rome ever since.

Reflecting broad concern that the Taliban could collapse at any moment, Brahimi said there was a danger of a political vacuum in Afghanistan. But he provided no proposals for filling the vacuum. "We may not have much time to plan," said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who sat in on the meeting. "We have to be nimble."

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