KABUL - In a convoy of vehicles with his picture plastered on the windshields, the Afghan president ousted five years ago by the Taleban has returned to the capital to reclaim his post.
Burhanuddin Rabbani's return raises worries over the effort to build a broad-based, post-Taleban government.
In just over a week, alliance forces that controlled a tiny part of northern Afghanistan swept south as Taleban fighters fled to escape punishing United States airstrikes. Suddenly, two-thirds of Afghanistan is in alliance hands and warlords from the various alliance factions are filling the power vacuum.
"It's all happened quicker than we thought," Britain's United Nations ambassador, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, told the BBC.
"We didn't realise the Taleban were such a house of cards."
The former president entered Kabul four days after his Jamiat-i-Islami fighters - the biggest faction in the alliance - captured the city.
Rabbani, who was last in the city when he was ousted by the Taleban in 1996, arrived in a jeep with blackened windows, part of a convoy of 15 vehicles that included representatives of other factions in the Northern Alliance.
Rabbani has never relinquished his claim to the presidency, though he has acknowledged the international calls for a broad-based government that would include all of Afghanistan's ethnic groups.
The alliance is made up largely of Tajiks like Rabbani, Uzbeks and other ethnic minorities. The country's largest ethnic group is the Pashtuns, who served as the backbone of the Taleban's harsh five-year regime.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has reiterated the importance of creating a broad-based government accepted by all of Afghanistan's diverse political and ethnic groups.
"If they do not do that, and one group tries to control power and assert itself, it is going to be a problem down the line," he said in Ottawa after meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. "And I would hope that Mr Rabbani also is aware of this happening since he knows intimately the history of his own country."
A White House official said on Saturday that the United States has been pressuring the Northern Alliance to share power with other factions and to let the UN oversee assembly of a new government. US officials are in the region and in direct contact with the alliance, he said.
Rabbani's foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, told a news conference that the Northern Alliance remained committed to forming a multi-ethnic government, including Pashtuns, "the sooner the better".
But it appeared that Rabbani's followers intended to enter such negotiations from a position of strength as the de facto rulers of this country. Rabbani invited all Afghan groups except the Taleban to a meeting to discuss formation of a new government, but insisted that it be held in Kabul.
The UN has been pressing to hold the meeting on neutral ground, and the Bush Administration urged the alliance to drop the demand for Kabul as a venue.
The US and its allies fear that a government dominated by Rabbani's movement would trigger the kind of factional conflict that destroyed much of the capital during Rabbani's tenure, from 1992 to 1996.
To try to stave off such a scenario, UN envoy Francesc Vendrell has arrived in Kabul to help work out a plan for a new Afghan government.
"It's an extraordinarily difficult situation in which the US and its allies are not in a position to exert control, or even significant influence, over their local allies on the ground whose military victory they smoothed the path for," said former Canadian ambassador David Malone, president of the International Peace Academy, a New York think tank.
Colonel Bob Stewart, who was commander of the British UN forces in central Bosnia during the Balkans conflict, said the UN was moving too slowly.
"Fundamentally, the United Nations should have moved much faster and got people on the ground there," he told the BBC.
Greenstock said he did not think the criticism was fair.
"You can't just move in behind a load of warlords and start taking over a capital city belonging to another country," he said.
"It all has to be done with legitimacy, with the support of the Security Council, and these things take a few days to organise."
Ravan Farhadi, an envoy for Rabbani's government, which is still recognised by the UN, told the General Assembly the alliance had no intention of monopolising power.
"All ethnic groups must be equally represented and given a voice," he said.
But diplomats say Farhadi has little clout with alliance military forces. And if the northern alliance fails to keep its envoy's promise, it risks "losing the international recognition that the Rabbani government tenuously enjoys at the United Nations", Malone said.
No multinational force has been drawn up yet, but a host of countries have pledged troops. Along with US forces already on the ground, the foreign troops could pressure the northern alliance forces to share power.
In other developments:
* Britain is insisting that the foreign minister of the Northern Alliance is happy with the deployment of British special forces in Afghanistan.
The Alliance's deputy chief of intelligence, Engineer Arif, said earlier that all but 15 of an 85-strong advance party of British soldiers should be withdrawn because they had arrived without consultation.
British Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw told the BBC, however, the remarks did not reflect the Alliance's official position on the British troops deployed to secure Bagram airport north of Kabul.
"The Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah is perfectly happy that they should be there and they're doing a very important job," Bradshaw said.
* US President's wife Laura Bush delivered the weekly presidential radio address yesterday in an unprecedented move for a first lady, condemning the "brutal degradation" of women and children in Afghanistan.
* At least 30 people were reported killed in US-led bombing of a village yesterday in an eastern Afghan province under the rule of local mujahideen.
The planes bombed Shamshad near the Pakistan border and most casualties occurred in a second attack wave after people from a nearby village went to help those injured in the first wave.
* The US Central Command said an errant US bomb damaged a mosque in Khost, near the Pakistan border, on Saturday. There were no details of casualties.
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