Chairman Of Afghanistan National Islamic Front Supports Formation Of Administration Headed By Khamid Karzai

The leader of the so-called Peshawar peace process, chairman of the National Islamic Front of Afghanistan, Pir Sayed Ahmad Gilani, has supported the formation of a new provisional administration headed by Pashtu leader Khamid Karzai. According to Gilani, the insufficient number of the seats in the new government, representing ethnic Pashtoons, may with time be changed at the Loya Jirgah - a meeting of representatives of the peoples and of the Elders - which has to be convened in the course of six months after the beginning of the work of the new administration. According to the reports of Radio Pakistan, Gilani believes that the Talibs, as a political force, have stopped to exist but as citizens of Afghanistan they should get the possibility to live peacefully in their country. At the same time one of the most influential commanders of the Northern Alliance, Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dustum said that he intended to boycott the new administration because his faction had not received the appropriate number of seats in it. Dustum insisted on receiving the portfolio of minister of foreign affairs. Instead, the delegation was offered the posts of the ministers of industry, agriculture and mines. "We are upset by such decisions which humiliate us," said he. Dustum promises to close the regions in the north of the country controlled by him for the members of the new government of Afghanistan which was approved at the conference on the Afghan settlement in Bonn.