Rival Afghan leaders, striving to reach a peace accord that ends years of fighting, have been made well aware that their country's economic future depends largely on their success in forging a sustainable settlement.

As negotiations continue in Bonn, western donors are expected once again to press that point at a conference due to begin in Berlin on Wednesday.

In the past week, UN officials brokering the agreement between four rival Afghan groups, have spelled out the message.

"The message is very clear. If you fight, you would get nothing from the international community," said one western official on Sunday. "But if you can have a political settlement, you stand to gain from the promise of billions of dollars flowing in."

The United Nations Development Programme estimates Afghanistan will need $7bn-$12bn in reconstruction assistance for the first five years of what is likely to be at least a 10-year project. The World Bank estimates the country will need $25bn, though diplomats say that figure is unrealistic.

In Berlin, Afghanistan's most loyal sponsors will gather to decide how much money the country can expect for the first 12 months for humanitarian relief and recovery. But UN officials stress recovery money, not humanitarian relief, will depend on political progress in Bonn.

During 22 years of Afghanistan's civil war, the two important segments of a peace process - political stability and money for reconstruction - have seldom been tied so closely together.

An Afghan delegate in Bonn said on Sunday: "Afghanistan is now right at the centre of the world. After September 11, there are increasing calls not just to rescue Afghanistan but in fact to rebuild it."

A UN draft agreement circulated to delegates seeks the establishment of an interim government with 29 members. It also proposes the establishment of a new Supreme Court and formation of a special commission to make arrangements for convening a loya jirga (grand council of tribal elders) in four to six months. It would agree on the composition of a two-year government.

An agreement at Bonn is bound to be hailed as a breakthrough in uniting one of the world's most divided countries.

But analysts said the conference could anyway hardly be characterised a failure, as Afghanistan is attracting unprecedented international interest.

"I only remember such intense interest coming together in the early 1980s after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan," said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a prominent Pakistani analyst on regional security. "This is a break from the past. Seldom have we seen so much happening together, all in one week".

Teresita Schaffer of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies added: "It's not over till it's over. But the apparent willingness to make compromises is better than expectations." Other analysts said the momentum for a peace settlement had been helped by the backing of the US, concerned not to let Afghanistan continue being a breeding ground for terrorist groups.

However Afghan analysts warned a new agreement must not lose sight of the legacy of previous peace agreements, broken within months as rival warlords chose to return to the battlefield.

In 1992, an accord between rival Afghan leaders to establish the first government of the Mujahideen freedom fighters broke down within months amid infighting between rivals.

In 1993, a Pakistani-backed effort got the rival leaders to assemble in Islamabad for a new agreement. To bolster that effort, they were taken to Mecca, Islam's holiest city, in Saudi Arabia to commit to peace. Within months, infighting broke out again.

"We are expecting some positive outcome but there are many gaps," said a former Afghan resistance commander in Peshawar, northern Pakistan, adding that many Afghans were bound to be disappointed with the failure at Bonn to create a larger council. "The problem is, we're up against a major ethnic divide and the larger council would have united Afghanistan in a way that an interim administration may not."

Diplomats noted that sustaining the global interest in Afghanistan may well be the only guarantee for a peace process to survive. "The international interest in Afghanistan remains very high. It has never been so in the past and its an important guarantee for the future."