Pakistan wants UN force in Kabul

Musharraf had warned Bush about the Northern Alliance

Pakistan has called for a UN peacekeeping mission made up of Muslim nations to be deployed in the Afghan capital Kabul and has lobbied to be a part of it.

President Pervez Musharraf has proposed that Pakistan and Turkey could contribute to any such force.

"Kabul should remain as a demilitarised city," the Pakistani president said while warning that the Northern Alliance should be kept out.

It is better if [Kabul] is controlled by a type of multi-ethnic consensus force

Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan

Correspondents say Pakistan is also worried about the situation along the border and fears that refugees and fleeing Taleban forces may seek to enter Pakistan if the situation in Afghanistan is unstable.

The BBC's Susannah Price in Islamabad says the government will be deeply concerned about the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance.

Last week, General Musharraf warned President Bush not to allow the Northern Alliance to take the capital.

On Tuesday, he repeated the warning.

"The Northern Alliance or any other group... must not enter Kabul because we know from the past experience the kind of atrocities and killings that took place in Kabul. We don't want that to happen again," he said.

Fears

Pakistan's foreign ministry had earlier predicted that, if the Northern Alliance returned, there would be a continuation of the civil war.

"Until the setting up of a multi-ethnic dispensation, no single group should occupy Kabul," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said.

The capture of Kabul by the anti-Pakistan opposition alliance will have negative implications for the country

Samiul Haq, Afghan Defence Council

Pakistan is therefore putting pressure on the international community to come up quickly with the long-awaited broad-based government, to include the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, who also live in Pakistan.

Its main concern is that the Northern Alliance is made up of Afghanistan's smaller ethnic groups, which have no connection with neighbouring Pakistan.

Traditionally, Pakistan has had closer links with the Pashtuns, while the Nothern Alliance is bitterly opposed to Pakistan.

"We don't want to see the policy of the United States towards Afghanistan shaped by ideas coming from Pakistan," Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said.

Islamic groups

Pro-Taleban Islamic groups in Pakistan have also reacted to the opposition takeover of Kabul, saying they are unhappy with the developments.

"The capture of Kabul by the anti-Pakistan opposition alliance will have negative implications for the country," Maulana Samiul Haq, chief of the Afghan Defence Council - an alliance of pro-Taleban groups - told The Associated Press.