Afghanistan: government of national unity urged.

The Security Council on 22 October called upon all Afghan parties "immediately to cease all armed hostilities, to renounce the use of force, to put aside their differences and to engage in a political dialogue aimed at achieving national reconciliation and a lasting political settlement of the conflict and establishing a fully representative and broad-based transitional government of national unity".

By unanimously adopting resolution 1076 (1996), the Council also stressed that the main responsibility for finding a political solution to the conflict lay with the Afghan parties. It called upon all States to "refrain from any outside interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, including the involvement of foreign military personnel", and also "immediately to end the supply of arms and ammunition to all parties to the conflict".

All Afghan parties were called upon to cooperate with the United Nations Special Mission to Afghanistan, and fulfil their commitments regarding the safety of United Nations and other international personnel in the country, "not hamper the flow of humanitarian assistance", and cooperate fully with the United Nations and other organizations and agencies in their efforts to "respond to the humanitarian needs of the people of Afghanistan".

The Council denounced the "discrimination against girls and women" and other violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in Afghanistan, and noted with deep concern "possible repercussions on international relief and reconstruction programmes".

'Open aggression'

Continued silence by the Security Council in the face of "open and naked aggression" against Afghanistan would constitute a "blow to the essence of the United Nations", Afghanistan's Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs Rahim Ghafoorzai told the Council on 16 October, as 27 speakers took part in a day-long orientation debate on the situation in that country.

When the Taliban movement had invaded Kabul on 27 September, it had been "accompanied by Pakistani military officers and militias", he went on.

Since the invasion of Kabul, women had been forced to leave their jobs, girls had been turned out of schools, and some 250,000 refugees had fled to northern Afghanistan, Mr. Ghafoorzai stated.

Sahibzada Muhammad Nazeer Sultan of Pakistan said the present conflict in Afghanistan dated from the refusal of President Burhanuddin Rabbani to step down at the end of his term in June 1994, thus triggering "widespread disaffection" against his State apparatus. In response, the Afghanistan Student Militia - the Taliban - had "restored relative peace to the two thirds of the country" that they held.

Speakers agreed that a military solution was not possible and called for an immediate end to the conflict, condemned the recent violation of the United Nations offices in Kabul and called for the security of all international humanitarian assistance personnel to be guaranteed. At the same time, they called on the international community to continue assistance to the Afghan people.

'No military solution'

There was "no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan", and there should be an immediate cease-fire, with the Afghan parties joining in a "genuine effort to find a political settlement to their conflict", stressed 19 regional and other interested Member States, as they held a consultation on 18 November in New York, at the invitation of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The participants - China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uzbekistan - also expressed their readiness to join in coordinated international efforts to help the Afghan parties to achieve those goals.

'New situation'

After the fall of Kabul on 27 September, there had been a "completely new situation" in Afghanistan, characterized by "definitely an outbreak of new military confrontation", the head of the United Nations Special Mission, Norbert Holl, told the press at Headquarters on 19 November. The "most visible one" was to the north of Kabul, but there was a "second one in the western province of Badghis", he added.

Before the implementation of any United Nations peace plan, the first step was to "cease the bloodshed and reach a cease-fire", Mr. Holl stated. He had been shuttling between the parties to that end for the last five weeks and managed to bring them together for the first time since the United Nations had been working on the peace mission in Afghanistan.

For the time being, he went on, there was an "agreement in principle on three important points": demilitarization of Kabul; a neutral force to fill. the vacuum created in Kabul, although there was a disagreement on its composition; and the recognition that a cease-fire should be the beginning of a more important political dialogue.

"We sit together on the floor, there are no tables, we have lunch together, we joke, but we all know that this is very serious business", Mr. Holl said.

Refugees

About 45,000 people from small towns and villages in front-line areas in Badghis Province had fled the fierce fighting between the Taliban and the combined forces of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ahmed Shah Massood in northwest Afghanistan, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported on 11 November.

In addition, there were already more than 9,000 displaced persons concentrated in the north of the country, about 15,000 had so far fled into Pakistan since the beginning of October, and some 6,000 to 7,000 Afghans had crossed into Turkmenistan.

According to UNHCR, Afghans constituted the "world's single largest refugee population in 1996, for the fourteenth year in succession". Although about 3.8 million people had returned home since 1989, there were still more than 1 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and 1.4 million in Iran, dating back to the Soviet occupation, as well as to more recent rounds of fighting between different Afghan factions, UNHCR reported.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had continued its activities throughout Afghanistan "despite the rapid and tumultuous changes" there, and the crisis had "no effect on UNDP-supported rehabilitation efforts", UNDP security officer Alan Brimelow said on 7 October. Those efforts included improving irrigation, feeder roads, crop production and water supply in rural parts, and rebuilding infrastructure and housing in urban areas.

Human rights

Jose Ayala-Lasso, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on 4 October asked Norbert Holl to convey urgently to the leader of the Supreme Council of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, his "strong concern for the situation of human rights" in Afghanistan.

Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur Choong-Hyun Paik on 11 October recommended (A/51/481) that, among other things: all Afghan parties should respect the inherent right to life of every human being, with an immediate cessation of all armed hostilities; the international community should make every effort to "curb violence and to diminish antagonism between competing factions", continue mine-awareness and mine-clearance programmes, increase humanitarian assistance to refugees and internally displaced persons, and make "concerted efforts to suppress the illegal trafficking of narcotics" in the areas neighbouring Afghanistan; a "coherent system of administration of justice" should be established; and a general amnesty proclaimed by the Taliban movement should be applied without discrimination. "There should be no acts of revenge", the Special Rapporteur stated.

Restrictions on Women Assailed

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali stated on 7 October that the restrictions on women, imposed by the Taliban, could have "serious repercussions" on the ability of the United Nations to deliver programmes of relief and reconstruction to Afghanistan.

Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), announced on 10 October that, in view of recent events in Afghanistan - especially the Taliban's decision to ban women from working outside the home, as well as to ban education for girls - humanitarian operations in that country could be threatened and must be reassessed.

WFP - the food aid organization of the United Nations and the largest relief agency in Afghanistan, which provided food for more than 1.8 million people - had the highest number of female workers of all United Nations agencies working in that country, comprising 4 international and 19 national staff, Ms. Bertini said. In addition, more than 50 per cent of WFP's projects were aimed at women, "making it indispensable that women employees be involved in their management and targeting", she stressed.

Opium Poppy Production: High but Stabilized

Opium production in Afghanistan, which had been skyrocketing from about 200 metric tonnes per year before the war broke out in 1978 to more than 2,200 tonnes in 1995 - following a brief surge to 3,400 tonnes in 1994 - has levelled off for the first time in 18 years, according to a UNDP report.

Nevertheless, Afghanistan's current yield of 2,200 to 2,300 tonnes of dry opium was almost equal to the combined opium production in the "Golden Triangle" - the Lao People's Democratic Republic, Myanmar and Thailand. Such as sizeable production in both subregions continued to have a significant impact on the worldwide abuse and trafficking in heroin, UNDP reported.