The United Nations is pressing for the rapid establishment of a transitional administration in Afghanistan amid growing concern about possible reprisals by the victors.
The speed of the Northern Alliance's capture of Kabul and its advance last night on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar took the international community by surprise. There was frantic diplomatic activity yesterday to ensure that a representative government was established rather than a regime dominated by the Alliance factions.
"Time is now of the essence", the UN special representative to Afghanistan, Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, told the Security Council in New York. "Things are changing fast on the ground."
The Alliance claimed that the Taliban had lost its Kandahar power base. Witnesses said thousands of tribal fighters were advancing on the southern city after taking the nearby airport.
The former Afghan president, Mr Burhanuddin Rabbani, said he intended to return to Kabul. "I plan to go back tomorrow", Mr Rabbani told the Al-Jazeera satellite TV station, but he said that the former king, Zahir Shah, could only return to Afghanistan as an ordinary citizen.
There were indications that some Taliban leaders wanted to continue fighting. Their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, urged his supporters not to behave like slaughtered chickens but to regroup and fight.
The end of Taliban rule over Kabul was marked by celebrations among the civilian population. Young men lined up to have their beards shaved for the first time in five years and music played from loudspeakers, defying the rules of the fundamentalist militia.
The UN confirmed that at least 100 Taliban hiding in a school in Mazar-e-Sharif were killed after the northern Afghan town fell to the Alliance forces. "They were relatively young people who were killed by the Northern Alliance troops on Saturday", a UN spokeswoman said.
In a speech to the Security Council, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, cautioned that "with military success comes very great political and humanitarian responsibility".
He added: "There have been too many atrocities in Afghanistan in the past, too much bloodshed, too little respect for human dignity and human life." He called for a "compelling, unanimous message" that the mistakes of the past must not be repeated.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, also warned of the danger of revenge killings. "When territory has changed hands in recent years in Afghanistan, there has been a terrible massacre of civilians, raping of women, a retaliatory sort of destruction by whoever comes in to take a town or a city", she told a news conference in New Delhi.
In Washington, President Bush said: "We support the UN's efforts to fashion a post-Taliban government that is broadly based and multi-ethnic. The new government must export neither terror nor drugs, and it must respect fundamental human rights."
Ambassador Brahimi told the Security Council that his deputy, Mr Francesc Vendrell, would go to Kabul to begin immediate consultations on a settlement.
The Ambassador said Afghan factions should be brought together in a single meeting as soon as possible. The factions should establish an ethnically-balanced provisional council, around which all groups could rally.
A grand assembly of tribal elders, known as a Loya Jirga, would be held to set out a national programme of action and security goals.
The provisional council could then set up a transitional administration, to last no more than two years. One of its tasks would be to draft a constitution. A second Loya Jirga would then approve the constitution and create a government for Afghanistan.
He said a security force would be required to "deter and if possible defeat" terrorist organisations and other hostile armed groups. An all-Afghan force was the first choice, followed by a multinational force.
Mr Brahimi told the council that an armed UN peacekeeping force was not recommended because it would take several months to establish.