Anti-Taliban forces have given the Islamic militia's soldiers holding out in the northern city of Kunduz until Thursday morning to surrender, an alliance commander said Wednesday. Meanwhile, the militia vowed to defend the provinces it holds in the south, denying they have contacts with Osama bin Laden.
"The Taliban have until Thursday morning to give themselves up. After that, they will have to take responsibility for what happens to them," said General Nazir Mahmad of the Northern Alliance, as cited by AFP
"For the moment we are pursuing negotiations with local Taliban chiefs," Mahmad said in Khanabad, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Kunduz.
But he added that an offensive could be launched Thursday or Friday.
The ultimatum, the second issued in a week, came as talks appeared at a standstill on the surrender of thousands of Taliban fighters clinging to Kunduz, their only remaining stronghold in the country's north.
US warplanes Wednesday again pounded the area where local sources said between 3,000 and 9,000 fighters were trapped, including Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis from terror suspect Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network.
The Northern Alliance has said that as many as 20,000 people have been under siege for more than a week. But local sources said this could include a sizeable civilian community of ethnic Pashtuns in Kunduz.
A Taliban commander has said the militia fighters would be willing to give themselves up, but only under UN supervision. However, UN, US and British officials have all said they could not get involved.
According to AFP, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf raised the plight of Taliban fighters in Kunduz with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday.
In Washington, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations of the Joint Staff, said Tuesday that US planes were bombing Kunduz at the request of the Northern Alliance but were ready to stop if it would help to negotiate a surrender.
But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reiterated US opposition to any deal that would allow foreign nationals fighting alongside the Taliban to walk free from Kunduz.
"It would be most unfortunate if the foreigners in Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda and the Chechens and others who have been there working with the Taliban, if those folks were set free and in any way allowed to go to another country and cause the same kind of terrorist acts," said Rumsfeld.
In the meantime, the Taliban said they intend to fight on and will not concede the four or five provinces in Afghanistan they now control, senior Taliban spokesman Syed Tayyad Agha told a press conference on Wednesday.
Any report that they would surrender the stronghold of Kandahar was "just propaganda," he said, as quoted by CNN.
Agha is the personal secretary to Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader. Wednesday's conference was the first by the Taliban since the suspension of daily briefings by the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan some weeks ago.
Omar, he said, was in a secure, secret location under Taliban control, but the Taliban do not know the whereabouts of bin Laden.
"We have no idea where he is because our areas are limited now to three or four provinces so now we don't know where he is," Agha said. "There is no relation (with bin Laden) right now, there is no communication."
Reuters news agency quoted him as saying the Taliban had special secret channels to contact the fugitive millionaire but for the moment had no need to stay in touch. "We do not need to see him," Agha said.
He said the Taliban had sufficient forces to defend the area around the southern stronghold of Kandahar, where the fundamentalist movement began its systematic takeover of Afghanistan after the fall of the Soviet-backed communist regime in 1989.
"We just want to satisfy our nation and (other Muslims) in the world that we will try our best and we will defend our nation and we will defend our religion (to the death) and we will not give anyone a chance to disrupt our Islamic rule in Kandahar and surrounding provinces," Agha said – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
