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By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, Dec. 1, 2001; 5:40 p.m. EST

Four Afghan factions negotiating the country’s political future continued to inch towards an agreement after representatives of the Northern Alliance appeared to break a deadlock over nominating members to a new interim government.

Meeting near Bonn under the auspices of the United Nations, the delegates are trying to establish an interim council of 15-25 members that will attempt to govern the lawless and fragmented country until a traditional council, or loya jirga, can convene next year. The loya jirga will create a transitional government to rule Afghanistan for two years in advance of national elections and the writing of a constitution.

UN proposals to create a parallel, larger supreme council appear to have been abandonned, delegates and international observers said. Balancing ethnic, geographic and religious interests in a larger body seemed to prove too difficult in a relatively short negotiation.

Delegates, however, are moving closer to agreement on the deployment of international peacekeepers to Afghanistan and they are discussing some immediate role for the aging former King, Mohammed Zahir Shah, international observers said. An accord may still be some days away as the delegates are still debating the exact structure of the new authority.

The deal, if forged, would effectively suspend the authority of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, the pre-Taliban government, that is headed by the alliance’s nominal head, President Burhannudin Rabbani. Now occupying the presidential palace in Kabul, Rabbani has complicated negotiations here by saying that the blueprint emerging from the talks was unacceptable. He said the members of the new council could not be selected in Germany but would have to elected in the next 30 to 60 days. International officials said that is an impossible task in the torn country, and have swayed delegates here to that view.

Rabbani has come under intense pressure in the last 24 hours to relent, taking calls from officials from the U.S., Germany, Britain, Russia and Iran. Zalmay Khalilzad, a senior director at the National Security Council who is in Bonn, phoned Rabbani and reminded him that billions of dollars in reconstruction aid will only be released to a broad-based government, and that task has to completed in Germany, according to a senior U.S. official.

The Northern Alliance foreign minister, Dr. Abdullah, said today in Kabul that "significant progress" was being made at talks in Germany, and dismissed suggestions that Rabbani was trying to obstruct an agreement that may remove him from power.

"I’m optimistic about an early result, very soon," Abdullah told a news conference. "We are ready to transfer power to a transitional authority."

Last week Rabbani also objected to the idea of a large foreign peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. While not directly contradicting that view, Abdullah today said all issues remained on the table for negotiation in Germany, and he dismissed as “speculation” media reports of a rift between the president and the negotiating team.

With the Taliban on the run, it remains to be seen if a new council, likely to be dominated by the Alliance with the king as a figurehead, is acceptable to leaders of the Pashtun community in the southern part of the country, never an alliance stronghold.

Besides the alliance, the three other delegations to the talks—representing the former king and two exile groups, one backed by Pakistan and one by Iran—are majority Pashtun, but they are identified with expatriates and many of their leading figures have not been in Afghanistan for decades.

Establishing its writ in Kabul, and then the rest of the country, will dominate the life of any interim council. But as the conduit for international aid, and enjoying the recognition of the major powers and its neighbors, the new authority will also have some real strengths. UN and international observers believe it is critical to get it established now with winter approaching and the country facing grave humanitarian needs.

"Our goal is to do everything possible to reach a conclusion so that, God willing, our country will reach peace and security," said alliance delegate Mirwais Ismail Khan. Keith Richburg contributed from Kabul.