Powell Welcomes Progress Toward A Broad-Based Afghan Government
(U.S.-led coalition continues to pursue Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida) (860) By Tom Eichler and Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr. Washington File Staff Writers Washington -- U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says he welcomes a Northern Alliance agreement to participate in a meeting -- to be held possibly within days -- with other Afghan groups to begin forming a broad-based post-Taliban government for Afghanistan. "The purpose of that meeting is to bring together the factions as quickly as possible, so that as quickly as possible we can create an interim government that can go in and begin to take administrative control in Kabul," Powell said. Then, longer-term, these groups can create a more comprehensive, broad-based government, he said. Powell, appearing on ABC's "This Week" November 18, said the agreement was announced by Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah and U.S. Envoy James Dobbins at a news conference in Tashkent. The U.N.-convened meeting will be held in Europe on forming a new government. "We're not going to dictate what they do with their government, " Powell said. "We will say to the Afghan leaders that if you truly want a representative government that will be respected in the eyes of the world, and that reflects the aspirations of all the Afghan people, you have to include women in this political structure." Powell said that during this transition period there may be a requirement for some military presence to bring in humanitarian supplies or for the purpose of providing a level of stability in the towns being liberated. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist group are still in Afghanistan, and the U.S.-led coalition is still actively pursuing them, he said. "We think he is still in Afghanistan," Powell said. "There aren't many countries around Afghanistan which would welcome him at the moment. Sooner or later, we'll get him." National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said, November 18 on NBC's "Meet the Press," that the principal target of the coalition campaign in Afghanistan remains the al-Qaida terrorist network. Finding al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden "is the most important element of this war," she said. "It is absolutely the case that we wanted to loosen the grip of the Taliban, but that was a means to an end. Al-Qaida has got to be broken up, its leadership has got to be found, and Osama bin Laden has got to be found." Asked about the progress of the effort to push Taliban forces out of their southern Afghanistan stronghold Kandahar, Rice said the coalition is determined to loosen the Taliban's grip in Kandahar and in the entire country as a necessary step towards rooting out the al-Qaida terrorists. Although the North Alliance has taken control of the Afghanistan capital Kabul, "they understand their responsibility to be a part of a broad-based government," Rice said. "The Northern Alliance, it appears, in the early stages did send security elements and forces into Kabul, because they believed that the situation was deteriorating into chaos as the Taliban were retreating. We understand that they kept the bulk of their forces outside the city, and we have been very clear that we do not expect there to be a kind of pre-emptive government set up in Kabul, that this is for the United Nations and for Afghanistan's neighbors and near neighbors to work with all Afghan elements so that we can have a stable government there. We believe that the northern alliance understands that and that they're going to respect that." Despite battlefield successes over the past week, Rice said the Afghanistan campaign may take a while. "It is really wonderful that the Northern Alliance has had the successes that it's had," she said. "It's wonderful that the strategy has worked so well in loosening the grip of the Taliban, but ... there is still a lot of work to do. There are still pockets of resistance and, most importantly, until we've met the president's objectives of ... rooting out al-Qaida, of loosening the Taliban's grip so that we can do that, and of ultimately making sure that Afghanistan cannot be used in this way again, our mission will not be complete." Discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Rice said that in using the name "Palestine" in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly November 10, President Bush was offering "a vision of where we might be should we be able to encourage the parties to get back into a process that leads to a permanent peace in the Middle East." That is a vision, she said, of "an Israeli state, our good friend Israel, that is secure, where it's fully recognized and accepted that Israel has the right to exist within secure borders, where terrorism has been wiped out as a factor in the Middle East, and where the Palestinian people have a state in which they can determine their own fate and their own future." (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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