Security Tight as Berlin Prepares for Afghan Talks

16/05/2001| IslamWeb

BERLIN (Reuters) - Leaders of Afghan's ethnic and political groups will converge amid tight security in Berlin Monday for talks to forge an interim government in the war-ravaged country.
Representatives of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, backers of the exiled king, exiles in Iran and Pakistan-based refugees are invited to the United Nations (news - web sites)-hosted meeting, whose location reflects a century of strong German-Afghan ties.
Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni will head the Alliance team while an aide to the king said he would send a high-ranking delegation which could include a woman -- marking a distinction with the fundamentalist Taliban which kept women at home.
Diplomats from United States, Britain, Pakistan and Russia are also expected to be attend. Washington will send its envoy to Afghanistan (news - web sites), James Dobbins, while Moscow will dispatch an official with past Afghan experience, Zamir Kabulov.
Germany will hope to bask in the glow of hosting a major conference as it seeks to raise its world profile. For now, Germany's role is to sort out logistics for the meetings behind closed doors amid the tightest of security.
``Brahimi is in the driver's seat...We are providing structural support, all else comes from the United Nations,'' said one diplomat, referring to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites)'s special representative to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi.
The venue for the hastily arranged conference has been fixed and the hotel rooms are booked, diplomats said Wednesday. But, in a sign of security concerns, officials in Berlin were reluctant to confirm exactly where the conference would be held.
Three of the four kamikaze pilots involved in the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, including alleged ringleader Mohamed Atta, lived in Hamburg and other suspects with German ties are still at large.
Only last week, the head of Germany's federal crime office said Islamic militants prepared to wage a jihad (holy war) may have lived undercover in Germany for up to 15 years.
``The risk is quite real. There are supporters of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) in this country,'' said Bernt Glatzer, Afghanistan expert at the German Foundation for International Development.