UN defends intervention in Afghan convert case

KABUL, Mar 30 (Reuters) The United Nations today said it intervened in the case of an Afghan Christian who had faced death for abandoning Islam to ensure his rights and because the country's ties with its main backers were in grave danger.

The convert, Abdur Rahman, was spirited out of Afghanistan to asylum in Italy yesterday, a day after he was released from jail following a storm of protest in the United States and other Western countries over his treatment.

But many conservatives in Afghanistan had insisted he be tried under Islamic law, which stipulates death for apostasy, and the Afghan parliament had said his release had been illegal and he should not be allowed to leave the country.

''It is clear that a wide gap has been opened between those who believe Mr Rahman should be free and those who believe he should be punished,'' the top UN envoy in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said in an open letter to staff.

The government of President Hamid Karzai had been seeking a way out of the crisis that would satisfy Western demands for Rahman's freedom without angering powerful conservatives at home.

The United Nations helped Afghan authorities resolve the case which Koenigs said was one of the most complex it had confronted in Afghanistan.

''We supported the government because we saw an individual's rights to a fair trial, to freedom of religion, to free expression, and to life and health, being in jeopardy,'' he said.

''We also saw a grave danger for Afghanistan's relations with many of its most committed international supporters,'' he said in the letter, posted on the UN mission's Web site (www.unama-afg.org).

The mission had a mandate that required it to protect human rights, and religious freedom was something that applied equally to followers of all beliefs, he said.

Commenting on Rahman's release, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Afghanistan's was an evolving democracy.

''You are dealing with a young democracy but you are dealing with one that at least has a constitution that enshrines a declaration of human rights, that understands the international concern about this issue and is responsive to that,'' Rice told reporters while on way to Germany.

REUTERS SB RAI2100