U.N. chief says universal support needed for success of post-Taliban government

By CAROLYN SKORNECK
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – A post-Taliban leadership for Afghanistan will succeed only with the endorsement of all parties in the country and the international community for whatever agreement is reached by negotiators at U.N.-sponsored talks in Germany, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday.

"There is now a real opportunity to create the sort of broad-based, fully representative government which the United Nations has been trying to help the Afghan people achieve for a long, long time," Annan said.

"To achieve it," he said, "any arrangement arrived at must reflect the will, the needs and the interests of the Afghan people, and enjoy their full support."

He did not mention a peacekeeping force for the country riven by ethnic and political strife for a quarter-century.

However, a U.N.-developed blueprint being discussed by negotiators from the various Afghan factions meeting near Bonn provides for deployment of an international security force to maintain law and order. The force would be sent only if the Afghans request it.

Annan spoke Monday to a packed crowd at the Library of Congress, there to see the 63-year-old Ghanaian accept the 2001 J. William Fulbright Prize for International Understanding.

The U.N. chief seized the opportunity to encourage richer, stable nations to pump financial and humanitarian support into poor countries.

"A collapsed and destitute state – such as Afghanistan – provides fertile ground for armed groups to plan and prepare unspeakable acts of terror," Annan said. The answer, he said, "is more democracy, not less; more freedom, not less; more development aid, not less; more solidarity with the poor and dispossessed of our world, not less."

Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who directs the Woodrow Wilson International Center, said Annan "takes tough positions with a soft voice and time and again sets us on the right course," in the face of "chest-thumping political rhetoric of the day."

Annan and the United Nations jointly won the 100th Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 12. That awards ceremony in Oslo, Norway, is scheduled for Dec. 10, prize founder Alfred Nobel's birthday.

APNP-12-03-01 1527CST