Far from the battlefields around Kandahar, where forces loyal to Hamid Karzai are closing on the Taliban's final stronghold, Afghan leaders meeting in Bonn have chosen Mr Karzai as the head of the country's interim administration.

Following a late-night negotiating session, UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told reporters: "We have an agreement. The date (for the government) is the 22nd of December."

Earlier, Daoud Yakub, a member of the Rome delegate at the talks, confirmed that Mr Karzai will lead Afghanistan for six months until a loya jirga,or council of elders, decides the shape of a two-year transitional government. The formula is one Mr Karzai has advocated since the days of the fundamentalist Taliban regime became numbered.

In October, shortly after the US bombing campaign began, the 46-year-old tribal leader slipped over the Pakistan/Afghanistan border and began to rally Afghans against the Taliban, gathering a large following of Pashtuns willing to fight against a regime that had been their brutal ethnic powerbase for five years.

He has become the Taliban's most wanted man. But that was not always the case. The group initially wooed his sympathies, but Mr Karzai turned against it in the mid-1990s, angered by the growing influence of Pakistan's intelligence services over the movement.

His position hardened two years ago, when his father, a former parliamentarian, was assassinated. The murder was widely believed to have been the work of the Taliban.

A middle child of eight siblings from a very influential family, Mr Karzai came to prominence under Burhanuddin Rabbani's Mujahideen government, following the defeat of Soviet forces in the late 1980s. He held the position of deputy foreign minister and head of the Popalzoi clan, the clan of Afghanistan's monarchs.

His grandfather had served under King Mohammed Zahir Shah, until the monarch was deposed in 1973, and Mr Karzai has retained the close relationship.

In Bonn, Mr Shah turned down the offer to head of the interim administration and initially pressed for the job to go Abdul Sattar Sitar, the head of the delegation, who nevertheless enjoys less support Both within Afghanistan and among western diplomats. In the end, though the king's delegation capitulated and Mr Karzai is expected to be officially named on Wednesday.

If all goes well and the unpredictable Mr Rabbani does not further delay the Bonn talks, Mr Karzai will become part of a new generation of young leaders to be ushered into Afghanistan by the UN on December 22.

Diplomats said the breakthrough in Bonn came amid tremendous pressure from the US. After more than a week of negotiations, Mr Rabbani was sidelined by three moderate Northern Alliance leaders - Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister, Yunus Qanuni, the interior minister and head of the alliance's delegation in Bonn, and Mohammed Fahim, the group's troop commander. All three stand a strong chance of keeping their positions in the interim government, diplomats said.

The choice of Mr Karzai, who speaks fluent English, was also backed by the US, alongside whom he is now fighting over Kandahar - a battle the UN is praying he will survive.