Details of multinational force

A senior United Nations official said on Wednesday that a multinational force, due to be deployed in the Afghan capital Kabul, would be different from a "classic UN peacekeeping force", which monitors a ceasefire or a peace agreement between two sides.

Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, told a news conference in the Pakistani capital Islamabad that such a force, when and if deployed, would be a friendly force to assist the Afghans in maintaining peace and security.

"The classic peacekeeping operation is one in which blue helmets go in to monitor a peace agreement, where two sides have signed a ceasefire and a peace agreement. This is a completely different situation. What we are talking about here and what is mentioned in the Bonn Agreement is a UN-mandated force, a multinational force," Fawzi said explaining that the UN would not put together such a force.

"It will possibly be put together by a coalition of the willing...," he added. Fawzi was speaking to journalists after Brahimi's visit to Kabul where he met Afghan political leaders ahead of the critical transfer of power to an interim administration on 22 December as agreed in the German city of Bonn recently.

The agreement envisages a multinational force to enable the new administration to work towards convening a 'Loya Jirga', or a meeting of elders, and to allow relief work to continue in an atmosphere of enhanced security. "The Security Council will issue a resolution in the next few days calling upon a group of states to form a force that will provide security in Kabul and its immediate surroundings." Fawzi said. Some agencies have called for a larger force that could be deployed over more of the country to provide security in other cities as well as rural areas.

Fawzi stressed that none of the Afghan leaders who met Brahimi in Kabul had opposed the multinational force, though some had questions about it. Brahimi met former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, foreign minister designate Abdullah Abdullah and Commander Mohammad Fahim, who would be heading the defence ministry in the 6-month interim administration.

"We did not detect outright opposition to the force, but there were questions about the force. Questions that we could not answer simply because the decision to deploy such a force rests with the Security Council in New York," Fawzi replied in response to a question. He also denied that pressure was being exerted by the Northern Alliance (NA), currently in control of Kabul, over the size and composition of the force.