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Roles differ, but Russia, US act in unison in Central Asia: experts

MOSCOW, Oct 23 (AFP) - Their roles in Afghanistan differ, but Russia and the United States are playing in a single production that both want to culminate in a popular new government capable of taking charge in Kabul when the dust from US bombing settles, experts said Tuesday.

An apparent divergence between Moscow and Washington on whether or not to include the hardline Islamic Taliban in a future government was planned in advance and designed to reassure a wide range of Afghan factions that their interests would be represented in any new regime, the analysts said.

"There are no real differences" between Russia and the United States on the complexion of Afghanistan's future government, explained Andrei Piontkovski, a respected analyst with Russia's Center for Strategic Studies.

"America and Russia have split their roles: Russia will take care of the Northern Alliance and the United States will look after Pakistan, hence their differing rhetoric."

That differing rhetoric was evident Monday when Russian President Vladimir Putin made a quick, unplanned stop in Tajikistan and announced that Moscow opposed including the Taliban in any future Afghan government.

The notion had been floated earlier this month by US Secretary of State Colin Powell while on a visit to Islamabad and was endorsed Monday by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, where a segment of the population feels close bonds with the current Taliban regime.

But though media here evoked a new split between Moscow and Washington following Putin's remarks, political experts said their significance was to be found less in what he said than in where and when he said it.

"This was said specifically in Dushanbe to demonstrate Russia's support of the government in Tajikistan," said Vladimir Kumachev, deputy director of the Russian Institute for National Security and Strategic Studies.

The government of Tajikistan and most members of the Northern Alliance fear that their interests will be sacrificed by a US-led drive to broaden the base of support for a new Afghan regime, and Russia's job is to convince them that will not happen, he said.

The Tajik government and most components of Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance viscerally oppose the Taliban, but experts unanimously agreed that inclusion of "moderate" Taliban figures would be critical to the survival of any future Afghan government.

"It is very unlikely that anyone would be able to govern the country without support of many who now back the Taliban" and few world leaders are better equipped to understand that than Putin, Kumachev said.

Timofei Bordachev of the Carnegie Moscow Center said Putin's lightening visit to Dushanbe, as well as the message he delivered there, were planned in advance with US President George W. Bush when the two met at the weekend in Shanghai.

"Putin's visit to Tajikistan was agreed with Bush," he said.

"Putin's goal was to persuade the Northern Alliance that it would not be ignored and to tell Rabbani of the US desire for the Northern Alliance to be more energetic in its operations," Bordachev added.

Burhanuddin Rabbani was deposed by the Taliban in 1996 but is still recognized by the United Nations and most states as the legitimate leader of Afghanistan. Putin met him for the first time Monday in Dushanbe.

While no one dismissed outright the comments made by Putin in Dushanbe, many analysts suggested that the issue for Russia -- and, for that matter, the United States -- was more a question of semantics than of principle.

"The Taliban could enter the government with no problem if that's what the Americans want but they would doubtless participate under another name and possibly just as Pashtuns," said Abdugani Mamadazimov, a Tajik analyst.

Pashtuns, from whose ranks the Taliban are drawn, are Afghanistan's largest ethnic group and also have a strong presence in northern Pakistan.

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