The information was confirmed latter by Mr. Ahmad Fawzi, the spokesman for the United Nations that sponsors the talks in Koenigswinter, a suburb of the former capital of western Germany, cautioning however that other issues, such as the portfolios and the number of members to both the government and the council as well as of peacekeeping force and security remained unsolved.

Asked about reported progress between the Alliance and the group backing former Afghan king Zahir Shah on an interim parliament, Fawzi said: "Their positions are quite close."

But Mr. Yoones Qanooni, the Northern Alliance’s Interior Minister and the head of the Bonn talks showed flexibility when he told hundreds of correspondents that though he do not see any need for a peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, yet the idea could be accepted "in principle" if it is part of a comprehensive peace concept.

But diplomats at the talks said the bloody mutiny in Mazar Sharif might convince the delegates here that their war-ravaged nation is not as peaceful as Mr. Qanooni claims.

Forces of General Rashid Dostom put down the uprising ruthlessly, only after three days of heavy fighting this week.

The Alliance said probably all 600 prisoners and more than 40 of its own fighters were killed after the prisoners seized weapons from their captors inside the sprawling, baked-mud fortress.

Johnny "Mike" Spann, 32, who worked for the CIA’s clandestine Directorate of Operations, also died in the firefight, the agency confirmed Wednesday, becoming the first U.S. military casualty since the U.S.-led war began last month.

"Delegates are working on the distribution of portfolios and power sharing in an authority, an interim council or a 50 to 60 seats Loya Jirga to be convened in Kabol before or after the Norooz, the new year of Afghans, Iranians, Kurds and Central Asian nations falling on 21 of March", sources said, adding "This is the difficult phase".

"We have agreed on the creation of a mechanism with the participation of all groups, particularly that of Rome", Mr. Mehrabeddin Mastan, the Alliance’s Ambassador to Paris and the European Union told the French News Agency AFP on the third day of the historic inter-Afghan talks.

"We want to go ahead but we do not want to go too fast", Mr. Mastan said, adding: "We have to reach an agreement, but the second phase of talks has to be held in Kabol and the leaders have to go there".

With eleven delegates each, the Northern Alliance and the Rome Group are the most powerful players among the four delegations that are taking part in discussing the country's future, the other two are formations, the Peshawar and Cyprus groups, backed respectively by Pakistan and Iran, have five men each.

Mr. Mastan confirmed that agreement was reached on an interim ruling council of 50 to 60 representatives of the former King and the Northern Alliance and 10 to 20 from the two other groups.

"If the two big groups agrees, we would also go along", one delegate said, pointing that most of the naggings comes from the Iran-backed Cyprus Group.

The talks entered their third day as US send with more Marines at a desert base near Qandahar, the Taleban’s last stronghold, searching for the Taleban’s supreme leader Mollah Mohammad Omar and Mr. Osama Ben Laden, the prime suspect behind the 11 September terrorist operations in New York and Washington D.C.li

In an interview with Poland’s "Wprost", Mr. Omar has repeated that the 11 September attacks were "the work of India and Israel, two sworn enemies of Islam, who wanted to demonstrate that all Muslims are terrorists".

Iranian conservative cleric rulers, including Ayatollah Ali Khameneh’i, the leader of the Islamic Republic, also blames Israel for the attacks, saying that Tel-Aviv wanted to benefit from the post 11 September situation to better crush the Palestinians.

The emotional issue of the return to Afghanistan of former Monarch Mohammad Zaher Shah seemed Thursday to have been solved between the Northern Alliance and the Rome Group, UN diplomats reported.