Afghan Taleban wants recognition of its dominance

KABUL, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taleban movement on Wednesday urged a new U.N. envoy to recognise it as the war-ravaged country's dominant force.

``We urge and expect him to comprehend the realities in Afghanistan and initiate his work on that basis,'' Taleban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil told Reuters.

``We want him to recognise the (Taleban's Islamic) Emirate as the dominant force,'' he said two days after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan named a Spaniard, Francesc Vendrell as his personal representative and head of the U.N. Special Mission to Afghanistan.

``All these factors are essential in his mission if he wants to find a solution for the crisis here,'' Muttawakil said.

Annan said on Monday he wanted to bolster the U.N. political presence in Afghanistan in an attempt to restart abortive peace talks between the Taleban and a north-based opposition alliance.

Vendrell, who was a driving force in the U.N. bureaucracy behind efforts to conduct last year's independence referendum in the former Portuguese territory of East Timor, replaces former Algerian foreign minister Lakhdar Brahimi, who resigned as special representative in October, saying Afghanistan's neighbours and the Taleban were making a mockery of the talks.

Asked what kind of solution he wanted the United Nations to look for, Muttawakil said the Taleban wanted a surrender by opposition military commander Ahmad Shah Masood ``whose fight against the Emirate is inadmissible.''

The Taleban movement controls about 90 percent of Afghanistan and the opposition alliance the remaining 10 percent.

Muttawakil welcomed the U.N. decision to move its mission's headquarters from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to Kabul, which was seized by the Taleban from Masood's forces more than three years ago.