Muslim scholar leads Afghanistan // Appeals for unity among victorious rebel fighters

KABUL, Afghanistan With a handshake, a blessing and athousand-gun salute, religious scholar Sibghatullah Mojaddedi wasinstalled Tuesday as president of Afghanistan's first Islamicgovernment.

Mojaddedi arrived in the capital in a convoy of several dozentroop trucks, jeeps and cars after three days of fierce urban combatby a moderate coalition of guerrilla fighters cleared the laststrongholds of fundamentalists long enough to usher in the nation'slatest hope for peace.

Mojaddedi immediately declared a general amnesty and appealed tofollowers of fundamentalist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to "lay downtheir arms and join us as Muslim brothers."

"We hope our brothers who resorted to this fighting will stopand instead help our people, who already have suffered so much in thepast many years of war," Mojaddedi said after the last vestiges ofthe nation's fallen authoritarian regime had handed over power to hismoderate, 51-member Islamic coalition.

"Ease the people's pain," he said in an address to Kabul'sdiplomatic and press corps during a ceremony in the conference roomof the Foreign Ministry.

Within an hour, Hekmatyar's forces answered his call withlong-range artillery, rocketing the city's airport and severalresidential neighborhoods from the fundamentalists' strongholdsouthwest of Kabul.

But there were indications that Mojaddedi's arrival in a citydesperate for peace - at the end of a two-day road journey fromPakistan - could signal the end of one of the world's bloodiest andmost protracted conflicts, a 13-year religious crusade by Muslimwarriors that degenerated into internecine combat.

Just before Mojaddedi's arrival - his first glimpse of thecapital in 19 years of exile - guerrilla fighters loyal to moderatecommander Ahmed Shah Masood blasted the last of Hekmatyar's tankpositions out of the strategic hilltop Cemetery of the Martyrs. And,just moments after Mojaddedi officially took power, the last ofHekmatyar's forces in Kabul gave up during an intense eveningfirefight to drive them from the downtown Interior Ministry complex.

And despite the artillery barrage from the southeast, aspokesman for Hekmatyar's Pakistan-based Hezb-i-Islami partyindicated a willingness to compromise.

Confirming the new mood of hope and peace, as Mojaddedi's carsped from the Foreign Ministry to a downtown building commandeered ashis temporary headquarters, the anti-aircraft guns, assault rifles,rocket launchers and tanks that had provided the city's soundtrack ofwar shot off thousands of rounds of celebratory fire.

Masood pledged his key support to Mojaddedi's council onTuesday, and he was joined by several former regime generals,important rebel commanders and most of the collapsed regime'sbureaucratic leaders.

The ruling coalition that was rushed in to fill Kabul's13-day-old power vacuum clearly remained a fragile one. Severalfactions staged press conferences in the capital Tuesday to declaretheir political neutrality, among them the leader of a Shiite Muslimpolitical party that controls the road between downtown Kabul and theDefense Ministry.

But Afghanistan's neighbors and the international community ingeneral reacted positively to Tuesday's ceremony, urgently seekingstability in a strategic nation that is the linchpin of South andCental Asia.

The United States welcomed the formal transfer of power from theold Soviet-installed regime to the Muslim rebel forces, whichWashington backed throughout the civil war.

Most diplomats and other analysts who witnessed the dramatictakeover ceremony said that the fear of an ethnic civil war waslikely to give the council enough short-term power to rule.

"Praise be to God, there is peace now in Afghanistan," saidMohammed Musa, an old man in the Jada-i-Maiwand neighborhood, whichwas devastated by the three-day tank battle to clear the Cemetery ofthe Martyrs.