AFGHAN hopes for a brokered peace with the Taliban have been shattered once again with the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani - the government's chief negotiator and the country's former president.
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Professor Rabbani, who headed the government's High Peace Council which facilitates contact with Taliban insurgents, was killed in his home in Kabul on Tuesday night by an assassin who hid a bomb in his turban.
Professor Rabbani believed the man who killed him had come to negotiate with him.
The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, cut short his visit to the United Nations in New York and has returned to Kabul to deal with the ever-worsening security situation in the capital.
Professor Rabbani is the fourth key Karzai ally to be assassinated this year. Security in the once relatively peaceful capital appears in tatters, too.
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 the space of a week, it has failed abjectly.
On Tuesday last week, six gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades, AK47s and a truck laden with explosives 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.
Professor Rabbani was a respected elder in Afghan politics, despite allegations of war crimes levelled against him during a civil war in the 1990s.
He was president of Afghanistan from 1992 until the Taliban swept to power in 1996. Driven from office and Kabul, he became the nominal head of the Northern Alliance, a resistance of mainly ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks who resisted the Taliban, particularly in the north of the country.
Professor Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, was appointed chief of Mr Karzai's High Peace Council in October last year.
The council has made little progress into brokering a peace deal with the Taliban, despite offers of amnesties and jobs for Taliban foot soldiers and asylum overseas for leaders.
Sadiqa Balkhi, a fellow peace council member, said the killing would be ''a big blow to [the] peace process and [a] huge loss for Afghanistan. Professor Rabbani was an influential and spiritual leader and was successful in luring Taliban fighters into [the] peace process''.
On Tuesday night, Professor Rabbani's assassin had been invited into his secure Kabul home with an accomplice because they were thought to be emissaries carrying a ''special message'' from the Taliban.
The man detonated his turban bomb as he bowed and hugged the former president in greeting, criminal investigations chief Mohammad Zaher said.
''He approached Rabbani and detonated his explosives. Rabbani was martyred and four others including Masoom Stanikzai [his deputy] were injured.''
The killer died but his injured accomplice was arrested.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the attack and warned more senior political figures would be targeted.
Mr Mujahid said the Taliban had given two ''articulate and well-trained'' fighters the task of building contacts with Professor Rabbani.
''Both of them were frequently meeting him at his Kabul home and secured [the] trust of Rabbani and his guards. They were telling Rabbani that they would soon bring senior Taliban leadership to the negotiating table with him.''
with Agence France-Presse
