Afghanistan will attend the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) summit in Malaysia this month after missing the last two meetings, an official said today.

"We are hopeful that the OIC summit will be able to achieve some important things, we are happy to be back," Afghanistan's ambassador Amanullah Jayhoon told the official Bernama news agency.

The war-shattered country, one of the founding members of the 57-nation OIC, did not attend the Tehran summit in 1997 or the Doha summit in 2000.

Afghanistan's seat was left vacant following the fall of then-president Burhanuddin Rabbani's government to the hardline Taliban regime in September 1996, which in turn fell to US-led forces in December 2001.

Iraqi situation

It remains unclear whether Iraq, which has also undergone a US invasion, will attend the summit, which is to be held in Malaysia's administrative capital of Putrajaya, south of Kuala Lumpur, on Oct 16-18.

Malaysia initially opposed the participation of Iraq's US-appointed governing council on the grounds that the country was still under occupation, but Foreign Minister Syed Hamid indicated at the weekend that council chief Ahmed Chalabi may attend.

"Iraq has requested that it wants to come. We just have to be informed who is to represent the country," he said.

The Afghan ambassador did not indicate whether his country would be represented by President Hamid Karzai. - AFP