Anti-Taliban warlord general Abdul Rashid Dostum has told US officials he will cooperate with Kabul's new interim government, a senior US State Department official told reporters in Moscow on Sunday. Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek and part of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, dominates most of Northern Afghanistan. He has said his mostly Uzbek Junbish-i-Milli faction is not fairly represented in the new Afghan administration.
''Dostum said he is willing to cooperate with the interim administration. We heard on Saturday. We talked to people of his faction,'' the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters travelling with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Powell is on a tour of allies in the US-led coalition to fight international terrorism.
The new 30-member interim Afghan authority, agreed after nine days of tough negotiations in Bonn, was fraying at the edges just after its creation on Thursday, with some members of the Northern Alliance expressing unhappiness over its make-up. Bureau Report