New Afghan envoy faces tough task

ISLAMABAD (NNI): United Nations Secretary Generals new envoy for the war-shattered Afghanistan faces may be the world most tough task to broker any peace deal to end the 20-year of Afghan conflict.

The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan appointed Frances Vedrell of Spain on Monday as his personal representative to Afghanistan, who is the 8th UN envoy for Afghanistan in last ten years.

Mr. Vedrells seven predecessors failed to broker any peace deal between the warring factions despite their efforts. He will take over the job from February 1st and plans to visit Islamabad during March.

The new envoy, who had been the deputy representative of the UN Secretary General for East Timor, will now try to end the deadlock in the peace talks in Afghanistan.

All the previous efforts to resolve the Afghan crisis peacefully remained unsuccessful and all the UN-backed efforts failed to bring peace between warring parties in Afghanistan.

The former personal representative of the UN secretary general Lakhdar Brahimi resigned in last October. Brahimi had blamed Taliban for not peacefully resolving Afghan conflict. The main objective of the Frances Vendrell will be to provide help to different Afghan groups to resolve the Afghan conflict through negotiations to establish a broad-based government in Afghanistan.

The Taliban government, which controls 90 percent area in Afghanistan, does not want to resume peace talks with opposition. Earlier the efforts of the "six plus two" group were failed to bring peace in Afghanistan.

Pakistan is supporting Taliban while Iran and Russia are supporting the opposition Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. At the moment the relations between Pakistan and Iran have become normal and both countries have discussed their policy toward Afghanistan.

The relations between the UN and Afghanistan were improved after the UN decided to send its workers back to Kabul in last March. The relations between two sides deteriorated after the UN Security Council imposed US-sponsored economic sanctions against Afghanistan over the Osama issue. Angry mobs attacked UN offices in several Afghan towns in reaction to the sanctions.

Now the new Afghan envoy had to work not only for finding out a solution to the long-standing conflict but to restore confidence of the Afghan nation in the United Nations, as Afghans considers the world bodys as hostile and under the influence of Washington.

Former UN envoys for Afghanistan included Perez de Cuellar (Peru), Digo Cordovez (Ecuador), Benon Sevan (Cyprus), Sotirious Mousouris (Greece), Nobart Hall (German), Mahmood Mestiri (Tunisia) and Lakhdar Brahimi (Algeria).