BONN - Calling a conference to foster reconciliation among the chaotic rivalries of Afghan politics is truly the triumph of hope over experience.

The warlords, rebels and Islamic militants who brought the Soviet Union to its knees in Afghanistan have botched every bid to overcome their own divisions ever since the Kremlin withdrew its troops in 1989.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy heading the conference of Afghan leaders opening in Bonn today, knows that better than most. He quit this job once before in frustration, saying it was impossible.

"There have been at least five peace deals since 1989, one even sworn in the holy city of Mecca, and not one was respected," said Pakistani analyst Husain Haqqani.

Afghanistan boasts such a long history of shifting alliances and stunning betrayals that organisers of these talks are not even sure how long they will last.

"They could last a week, 10 days, three days - it all depends on the progress we make," said Brahimi's spokesman Ahmed Fawzi.

There are reasons to hope these talks might avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. But experience tells the delegates the odds are stacked against them.

In 1989, when Moscow withdrew its troops after 10 years of war in vain, Mujahideen (holy warriors) parties based in neighbouring Pakistan formed an interim government and prepared for a quick return to Kabul.

Foreign Minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a Pashtun Islamic radical lavishly financed by Pakistan, undercut the new accord by quitting only six months later and then staging a failed coup in Kabul with a communist general.

When the Kabul government collapsed in April 1992, the Mujahideen parties signed the Peshawar Accord, a power sharing deal so complex it seemed doomed to fail.

It did. Sibghatullah Mojaddedi became interim president for two months and handed over power to Burhanuddin Rabbani, the ethnic Tajik head of the Jamiat-i-Islami party that is the core of today's Northern Alliance.

He was supposed to rule for four months and hand over to another interim government for the next 18 months.

But Pashtun outsider Hekmatyar soon launched furious rocket attacks on Kabul to impose his will on his rival. He failed, but 2 000 residents died in the process.

Rabbani then broke the Peshawar Accord and had himself declared president for another two years - a step the Pashtun tribes hold against him to this day.

The Islamabad Accord of March 1993 tried to square the circle of rivalry by naming Hekmatyar as prime minister. Fighting resumed in Kabul two days afterwards.

Two months later, the parties tried to patch up their differences with the Jalalabad Accord that also soon collapsed under the thunder of rival cannons.

The Taliban, a purist Islamic group from the Pashtun south that revolted against the chaos in Kabul, finally unseated Rabbani by conquering the capital in 1996.

The United Nations has worked since 1990 to help form a broad-based government, appointing a series of senior diplomats from Turkey, Tunisia, Germany, Algeria and Spain to tackle this mission impossible.

Recent events show worrying parallels to the past, especially the way Rabbani's Northern Alliance seized Kabul before other groups in a repeat of the conquest of the city by his commander Ahmad Shah Masood in 1992.

But this time around, Rabbani and his aides sound more convincing when they promise to share power and not revert to the winner-take-all approach the Afghans traditionally prefer.

"My sense is that they have actually learned from history," Stephen Evans, the new British ambassador in Kabul, told the BBC last week.

Pakistan, a leading outside meddler in Afghan affairs, has also been weakened by its full support for the Taliban and may now not be able to pull strings through spoilers.

"The situation is different now," said Olivier Roy, a leading French Afghan expert. "Hekmatyar has no more power in Afghanistan. He's finished." - Nampa-Reuters