Global Policy Forum

By Steven Erlanger

After negotiating all night, Afghan delegates reached agreement early this morning on a new, post-Taliban government for Afghanistan that will take power in Kabul on Dec. 22, according to Ahmad Fawzi, a United Nations spokesman.

The interim adminsitration will be led by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun leader currently fighting the Taliban in his home area of Kandahar. Mr. Karzai, an English-speaking relative of the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, 87, is considered to be widely acceptable to various factions inside Afghanistan and to the countries surrounding it.

One of the five vice-chairman will be Dr. Sima Samar, who will also be in charge of women's affairs. Some of the cabinet posts are not yet filled, officials said, due to the difficulty of contacting people and ensuring their agreement to take part.

The only other new official identified by the United Nations spokesman this morning was Dr. Suhaila Seddiqi, who will be in charge of public health.

The agreement came at 6:45 a.m., after a final meeting convened at 5:30 between Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, and the heads of the four Afghan delegations and their aides.

A signing ceremony scheduled for this morning will be attended by the German chancellor, Gerhard Schríƒoder. Germany has been the host for the conference, which began more than a week ago.

The new administration, to be made up of a chairman, five deputies and 23 other ministers, will become the internationally recognized government of post-Taliban Afghanistan as of Dec. 22 and take over the country's seat in the United Nations. It will mean that the remnants of the current administration in Kabul, led by the former president, Burhannudin Rabbani, will be supplanted.

The new government, to sit for up to six months, is meant to be broadly based and representative of Afghanistan as a whole, even of an Afghanistan at war. But without the complete list of ministers, it is impossible to tell how representative the new government will be. The United Nations worked to include people from all the main ethnic, religious and political groupings of Afghanistan, officials said.

The agreement also asks the United Nations Security Council to authorize the early deployment of a multinational peacekeeping force to ``assist in the maintenance of security for Kabul and its surrounding areas.'' The force could later, ``as appropriate, be progressively expanded to other urban centers and other areas.''

France is already drafting the needed Security Council resolution and Britain is

prepared to organize and serve as the core of the force, which would also include willing Muslims like the Turks, diplomats said. They said Washington supported the idea of such a force around Kabul since the Afghans wanted one, but would not want it extended to areas where it could get in the way of the war against Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

A senior European diplomat said there had to be ``a substantial presence, either in preliminary or buildup mode,'' of the multinational force in Kabul on or about Dec. 22, when the new administration would take power there.

The exact date is being discussed with the titular leader of the Northern Alliance, Burhanuddin Rabbani, who lives in the presidential palace in Kabul and whose remaining governmental authority would be supplanted by the new administration.

How big the multinational force will be and how long it will serve will be determined by the countries deploying it, the United Nations and the new government, diplomats said.

Under the agreement, a special commission will be appointed within a month to organize the calling of an emergency loya jirga, or traditional constituent assembly of provincial leaders and notables.

The loya jirga should be called within six months, probably in the spring, and would have the right to revise the new interim executive and create other bodies, like a legislature, for a transitional government that would serve for up to two years.

The agreement foresees the drafting of a new constitution, to be ratified by another loya jirga, and elections at the end of that two-year period.

In an unusual stipulation, these loya jirgas are intended to include

representatives of Afghan refugees living in Iran, Pakistan and elsewhere, members of the Afghan diaspora, and members of organizations outside of government, as well as prominent ``individual Islamic scholars, intellectuals and traders.''

The commission is also to ensure that ``due attention is paid'' to the presence in the loya jirga ``of a significant number of women.''

The former king is to open the emergency loya jirga and preside over its first session.

As a gesture to his popularity, the text notes that he was ``invited'' to head the interim administration but ``indicated that he would prefer a suitable candidate acceptable to the participants.''

As a gesture to Mr. Rabbani, who has worked to slow down and undermine these talks, the diplomats say, there is a statement of appreciation to the Afghan mujahedeen who have defended the country's ``independence, territorial integrity and national unity and have played a major role in the struggle against terrorism and oppression'' - code words here for the Taliban.

In a move that is already creating

political difficulties in Kabul, the document calls for the disarming of various militia or military units where the multinational force is deployed. The police force would not be disbanded.

The agreement also forbids the new government from granting amnesty to anyone who has committed ``serious violations of international humanitarian law or crimes against humanity.''

Those provisions, diplomats and officials say, are being used in Kabul to create uncertainty about the new agreement. Mr. Rabbani and his allies have suggested that the participants here are allowing the West and the United Nations to take over Afghanistan, introduce foreign troops, disarm the mujahedeen and organize war crimes trials.

``It's last-minute brinkmanship, but shouldn't sabotage the agreement,'' a United Nations official said.

Still, he suggested that it could be a line of political attack in the future and that Mr. Rabbani might be preparing his own political campaign against the new authorities.

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