Afghan commander says new force to quell fighting

By Stuart Grudgings

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Feb 5 (Reuters) - A military commander in northern Afghanistan played down on Tuesday recent clashes between his men and a rival force that have raised doubts about the stability of the new government.

Surrounded by battle-hardened ethnic Tajik fighters, commander Mohammad Atta said a special force drawn from different ethnic groups had been set up to drive renegade commanders from the areas where some 40 fighters were killed in clashes last week.

Denying rumours of a rift with warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, Atta said the new force would begin work on Wednesday.

"General Dostum and I are close friends. We take all decisions by consultation. It was a problem caused by commanders who were sixth or seventh in the chain of command," said Atta, sitting under a huge portrait of slain opposition leader Ahmad Shah Massoud in his city centre compound.

"A meeting was held and we agreed to select 600 people from police stations, containing members from all ethnic groups. They will be stationed at checkpoints and other important places," said Atta, a member of the mainly ethnic Tajik group Jamiat-i-Islami.

"One of the first acts will be to drive away all the armed people from the centres."

Atta and Dostum joined forces to take back the strategic town of Mazar-i-Sharif from the hardline Islamic Taliban last November, but they are loyal to rival factions in the interim government in Kabul.

Dostum, who is deputy defence minister, leads the mainly ethnic Uzbek movement, the Junbish-i-Millie, which has a long history of rivalry with the Jamiat movement of Atta, who is loyal to the Defence Minister Mohammad Fahim.

DEADLY SKIRMISHES

In the latest of several skirmishes between troops loyal to the two movements, up to 40 people were reported killed last week in Sholgara, south of Mazar-i-Sharif, Chimtai to the west and Dawlatabad to the north.

In eastern Afghanistan, about 50 people were killed last week in fighting at Gardez which broke out when forces under Padshah Khan Zadran, the governor appointed by the interim government, tried to disarm some troops loyal to the town's tribal council led by a rival commander, Haji Saifullah.

"You have to bear in mind the people have been suffering for 23 years and the people have got used to weapons and arms and so inevitably there will be local problems. That is why we need peacekeeping forces," Atta said.

Shortly after last year's Bonn meeting of various Afghan groups which decided on the appointment of the interim government, Dostum said he would boycott the new administration because it was unrepresentative.

He changed his mind after being given the post of deputy defence minister.

Aid agency officials are worried by the fighting in the north, which they say disrupted the supply of vital aid to the thousands of displaced people in one of Afghanistan's poorest areas.

One aid official told Reuters earlier on Tuesday that the fighting around Sholgara had prompted the last agency operating in the area to pull out.