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CNN Live At Daybreak

Afghan Delegates Agree to Plan, Now Have to Agree on Specifics

Aired December 03, 2001 - 05:11   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, there is a slight hold up in talks over Afghanistan's future. Diplomats are happy with the general plan. Now, they want to get down to some specifics, like who is going to be taking on what role in the new order.

CNN's Bettina Luescher is covering the talks for us. She joins us now live from Koenigswinter, Germany, which is near Bonn -- hello, Bettina.

BETTINA LUESCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.

Well, the delegates were meeting late into the night here discussing what the U.N. proposal, the U.N. draft agreement looked like. We are talking about 29 people who would run an interim administration for about six months or so.

What's happening now is that translators are busy coming up with a new draft, basically taking into account all the revisions and additions that the delegates suggested.

So there are many details that have to be worked out. What sources are telling us is that in one compromise move, somebody representing the former king of Afghanistan would head this government. But the crucial thing is that still many names have to be filled in of who gets what portfolio.

And just to give you a little sense of how difficult these talks have been and are still, here's U.S. envoy James Dobbins.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES F. DOBBINS, U.S. ENVOY: We feel that for this conference to be fully successful, they need to agree on an administration that can go to Kabul and take office, not just on a set of principles which would later have to be fleshed out and implemented at another conference. And we are hopeful that there will be a fully successful conclusion to the conference. They made progress, significant progress, overnight in defining what it was that they were to agree upon. We hope that they will begin exchanging the names of the members of this administration in the next 24 hours or so and if they succeed in agreeing on that, then I think we will have what we can call a full success here.

(END VIDEO CLIP) LUESCHER: And the U.N. saying this morning that they got the promise that a list of names will be provided today. They will meet with the Afghan delegates later on and the U.N. again saying, you know, it's in the hands of the delegates now to come up with a successful agreement to make all of this happen -- Leon.

HARRIS: Well, Bettina, did the delegates plan on imposing any sort of a deadline on themselves, say, perhaps, to make sure they have some decision made and a government in place, say, by the end of the year or anything along those lines?

LUESCHER: Well, that's what some of our diplomatic sources are telling us who hope that this next government will be in place by the end of the year. There's no deadline here for how long this conference will be running. Everybody here is extending their hotel reservations and the victims of all of these delays have definitely been a group of dentists, who now have to look for a new place, a new hotel for their dentist convention.

So nobody quite knows how long these talks will here go on, Leon.

HARRIS: All right, good deal.

Bettina Luescher reporting live from Koenigswinter, Germany. Good to see you again. Take care.

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