A DEFIANT Taliban have claimed responsibility for the assassination of the Afghan government's main peace broker, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, and warned more senior political figures would be targeted.
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Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Taliban had assigned two ''articulate and well-trained'' fighters to build contacts with Dr Rabbani, who headed the High Peace Council.
''Both of them were frequently meeting him at his Kabul home and secured trust of Rabbani and his guards. They were telling Rabbani that they would soon bring senior Taliban leadership to the negotiating table with him.''
Dr Rabbani's death is the most severe blow yet to hopes of a negotiated settlement of the Afghan insurgency. He was killed in his Kabul home late on Tuesday by an assassin who had a bomb hidden in his turban.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai cut short his visit to the UN and has returned to Kabul to deal with the worsening security situation.
Dr Rabbani is the fourth key Karzai ally to be assassinated this year, following the deaths of former Oruzgan governor Jan Mohammad Khan, Kandahar mayor Ghulam Haidar Hamidi and the President's half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, regarded as the most powerful politician in the restive south of the country.
Central Kabul is supposedly protected by a Ring of Steel, a series of 25 heavily fortified checkpoints designed to prevent attacks on key government buildings and international institutions. Twice in a week it has failed abjectly.
Last week, six gunmen fought a 19-hour battle with security forces, attacking Afghan government buildings, the US embassy and the headquarters of NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
Dr Rabbani, regarded as a respected elder in Afghan politics, was president of Afghanistan from 1992 until the Taliban swept to power in 1996. Driven from office and from Kabul, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, a force made up mainly of ethnic Tajiks and
Uzbeks who resisted the Taliban.
Northern Alliance leaders quickly denounced the peace process.
Abdullah Abdullah, a former presidential candidate and Northern Alliance leader, said: ''This is a lesson for all of us that we shouldn't fool ourselves that this group, who has carried out so many crimes against the people of Afghanistan, are willing to make peace.''
Last spring, the Taliban proclaimed they would kill members of the peace council.
''No one took it seriously and they should have, and it is also time for President Karzai to wake up,'' Dr Abdullah said. ''These are the people who he calls his 'dear brothers', they are behind what happened.''
On Tuesday, Dr Rabbani's assassin, a man by the name of Esmatullah, had been invited into his secured Kabul home with an accomplice because they were thought to be emissaries carrying a ''special message'' from the Pakistan-based Quetta Shura, a key leadership group in the Afghan Taliban.
The man detonated his bomb as he bowed and hugged Dr Rabbani in greeting, Kabul criminal investigations chief Mohammad Zaher said.
The assassin died. His accomplice has been arrested.
With AFP, NEW YORK TIMES
