KABUL - Northern Alliance president Burhanuddin Rabbani said on Sunday that members of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime could participate in a transitional government "as individuals".

Rabbani told a news conference here that 11 members of the Northern Alliance, including one woman, would go to Tuesday's conference in Bonn on the future of Afghanistan, out of a total of 21 participants invited.

Members of the Taliban regime chased from power in Kabul nearly two weeks ago were not invited to the UN-sponsored conference but Rabbani did not rule out a role for some of them in an interim government.

"The elements of the Taliban are not criminals and they don't have an obvious guilt," Rabbani said.

"They can be part of the interim government if they are selected through the loya jirga (traditional meeting of tribal chiefs) and people select them as individuals, not as party members."

Rabbani said that under an agreement with the United Nations, the Northern Alliance would send the majority of participants to the Bonn gathering, with a delegation of 11.

He said three people representing exiles in Peshawar, Pakistan were invited along with four people from Rome where the former king Mohammed Zahir Shah is based, and three from the exile community in Cyprus.

Officials in Germany, however, spoke of up to 50 participants.
The alliance - a disparate mix of Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara and other minorities - has said it is willing to share power with the dominant Pashtun community, despite its fears that Taliban could easily regroup under a new name.

Alliance foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah had said on Friday there was no such thing as a "moderate Taliban," adding: "The phrase is a contradiction in terms, it does not exist". - Nampa-AFP