Pakistan calls for 'demilitarised' Kabul

Diplomatic efforts continued world-wide yesterday to establish a viable post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, while Pakistan…

Diplomatic efforts continued world-wide yesterday to establish a viable post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, while Pakistan stressed that the Afghan capital must be controlled by the United Nations.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Islamabad said Kabul should be a demilitarised city. "Pakistan will encourage all those Afghans who would like to join a peace process facilitated under the auspices of the UN so that a truly broad-based multi-ethnic dispensation can take over," Mr Aziz Ahmed Khan said.

As Northern Alliance forces continued to advance across Afghanistan yesterday, the Taliban deputy ambassador to Pakistan, Mr Suhail Shaheen, said its fighters were not in flight. Mr Shaheen, the Taliban's only remaining envoy in Pakistan, said: "There is a new regrouping and, of course, there will be a new programme . . . worked out."

A US envoy to the Afghan opposition arrived in Pakistan last night and is due to meet Pakistani government officials and Afghan leaders.

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Mr James Dobbins will hold consultations for several days. He held talks with the former Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, in Rome earlier this week as part of an urgent effort to build a transitional broad-based government.

The 87-year-old king has lived in Rome since he was ousted in 1973.

Meanwhile, pro-Taliban groups in Pakistan said yesterday that the hard-line Islamic movement would now fight a guerrilla war. Mr Abdul Aziz Khan Khilji, a representative of radical religious party Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam (JUI), said the Taliban had moved to the hills.

Many of the Taliban emerged from the JUI's religious schools, or madrassas, in Pakistan, and its officials say they are in contact with the fundamentalist militia.

Pakistan's Islamic parties have been staging nationwide protests in support of the Taliban and against their government, which has allowed US aircraft to use its airspace and bases for operations in Afghanistan.

Mr Iqbal Zaffar Jhagra from the moderate Pakistan Muslim League said many people in the north-western city of Peshawar, where there are many Pashtuns, were "sad and worried" by the Taliban's retreat.

Mr Jhagra's branch of the league recently joined Pakistan's radical religious parties in calling for an end to US air strikes in Afghanistan.

He said the Northern Alliance's recent gains might be temporary as a civil war could ensue in the absence of the formation of a broad-based post-Taliban government.

"We feel that any government in Afghanistan must include Taliban. Keeping them out of the government will not lead to a stable situation," he said.

The Pakistani president, Gen Pervez Musharraf, has said any UN peacekeeping mission for Kabul should be made up of Muslim nations, and Pakistan could contribute to such a force.

Pakistan does not want to see the opposition Northern Alliance, with which it has long had hostile relations, holding power in Afghanistan. It fears an alliance takeover there could spark a repeat of the factional infighting which took place in 1992, the last time the Northern Alliance entered the city upon the collapse of the communist government.

The alliance is made up largely of ethnic minorities, particularly Tajiks and Uzbeks, while the Taliban is dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group. Pakistan also has a significant Pashtun minority and the government had supported the Taliban until it backed the US air strikes on the country. Gen Musharraf has said Pashtuns must be included in any government formula.

The former Kandahar governor, Mr Gul Agha Sherzai, accompanied by 1,000 armed men, departed for the city from Quetta in southern Pakistan yesterday in an attempt to persuade the Taliban to surrender.