BONN, Nov 27 (AFP) - The four Afghan groups attending historic talks near Bonn have agreed to strike a deal on a transitional government within three to five days, a United Nations spokesman said Tuesday.

Ahmad Fawzi said the UN had not imposed a deadline on the parties, but that they had agreed to wrap up the work of the conference within that time.

"The parties agreed that they would like to spend three to five days in Bonn working on these talks. They hope to achieve an agreement within that time period on the issues of the agenda," he told a news conference.

Fawzi, the spokesman of UN envoy to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, said the conference's participants who opened their discussions on a post-Taliban government for Afghanistan earlier Tuesday had also agreed the agenda of the talks.

"We had a very successful morning," he said. The agenda calls for the formation of an "Interim Supreme Council of Afghanistan", or transitional government, a cabinet-style body of 20 or less members which would run the country for some three to six months, he said.

It also calls for the formation of the "Interim Administration of Afghanistan", which Fawzi likened to a kind of parliament, and then the formation of an "Emergency Loya Jirga", or grand council of elders.

He envisaged that a Loya Jirga, a gathering charged with drawing up a new constitution, would convene in March or April 2002 around the time of Nawrooz, the traditional Persian New Year holiday.

The spokesman again stressed that the United Nations wanted to move as rapidly as possible. He repeated that "time is of the essence", explaining: "The situation on the ground is changing. We have to bear that in mind."

The agreed agenda has a further point entitled "Measures to ensure security for the people of Afghanistan" but Fawzi said that there had been no discussion of that so far Tuesday.

The previous day he had spoken of a multinational force to ensure security in the country, but the Northern Alliance, one of the two main groups represented in Bonn and in effective control of the capital Kabul and much of the country, is opposed to such a force.

But asked about the security element on the now-agreed conference agenda Tuesday, Fawzi seemed to backtrack away from the prospect of any international force being agreed by the Afghan groups in Bonn.

"The (security) title (on the agenda) is open and flexible and leaves it up to the people of Afghanistan and delegates to decide what kind of security measures they would like to see," he said.

Diplomatic sources close to the talks also described the issue of a foreign military presence as a major sticking point, and on Tuesday Afghanistan's neighbour Iran -- a key player in the Afghan civil war -- also voiced its fierce opposition to a foreign security force in the country.

ma-sas/cml AFP

Copyright (c) 2001 Agence France-Presse