Exiled former king Mohammad Zahir Shah is the only figure capable of restoring peace to war-ravaged Afghanistan, anti-Taliban group leaders said in Peshawar Monday.
Delegates at a meeting of more than 1,000 Afghan community and military leaders said a stable, independent and representative government in Afghanistan is essential to the success of the US-led fight against terrorism.
But they warned the United States against interfering in Afghan politics, after senior White House officials said Sunday the Taliban Islamic militia should be removed from power if it continued to support alleged terrorists such as Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
"We don't want the US to attack Afghanistan. Bombing Afghanistan is not a solution because the Osama issue relates to only one group," said Ishaq Gilani, spokesman for the Afghanistan National Unification Movement which organized Monday's meeting in this northwestern Pakistani border city.
"Terrorism will not end unless Afghanistan gets a stable government which is possible only under Zahir Shah."
Gilani, son of moderate Afghan leader Pir Syed Ahmed Gilani, said the Afghan people would support a broad-based government with the former king as a unifying figurehead.
Shah, 86, has lived in exile in Rome since the early 1970s when his 40-year reign ended in a coup.
He watched from afar as his country was invaded by the Soviet Union from 1979 to 1989 and then descended into anarchy as rival ethnic and political factions fought for the spoils of power.
But with Afghanistan's current rulers, the hard-line Taliban Islamic militia, now the target of possible US attacks, he has become a focus of rejuvenated efforts to bring the warring factions together.
On Sunday he met US Congressmen and representatives of the anti-Taliban opposition alliance, which is fighting the militia in various pockets of resistance, to discuss solutions to Afghanistan's relentless turmoil.
He told the Congressmen that he would prefer assistance from a multilateral body like the United Nations instead of the United States alone, but left the door open to support from a US-led coalition of Western nations.
Washington has been building a multinational coalition of European, Asian and Arab states in what President George W. Bush has termed a "crusade against terrorism" in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Saudi-dissident bin Laden, and his allies in the Taliban, are considered the prime targets for any US retaliation.
"The Taliban organization has worked in close concert with Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network," White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card told Fox News Sunday.
"They cannot be a party to these terrorist acts, and if they're going to continue to be a party to the terrorist acts, they should not be in power” -- PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
