UN Security Council members are drawing up resolutions that would quickly endorse the accord reached among Afghan factions but which would hold off on a peacekeeping force until the US allows one.
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One resolution would be a straightforward endorsement of the Bonn agreement and a signalling of willingness to help with security. But a second resolution authorising a multinational force would have to wait until Britain and France could persuade the US to accept it.
Afghan factions, meeting for more than a week under UN auspices in Bonn, Germany, put aside two decades of war and chose a broad-based government, including an interim prime minister, to lead the shattered nation before free elections.
The accord also envisions a multinational peacekeeping force mandated but not organised by the UN Security Council. Britain, France, Germany, Turkey and possibly Jordan as well as other European nations are expected to take part in any peacekeeping force. An all-Muslim force, as some had suggested, has been excluded by most UN officials.
However the US has indicated its unwillingness to place peacekeepers in Afghanistan until it has achieved its aims of rooting out the Taliban, the al Qaeda network and finding the hiding place of Osama bin Laden.
"The challenge will be working out how two military operations can overlap," said one European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "No one is prepared to wait indefinitely and allow the political process to deteriorate but they could go in stages, with Kabul first."