Osama bin Laden has been localized at one of his bases near Kandahar, the Northern Alliance said Sunday, while US Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed Taliban claims that the Saudi-born extremist is no longer in territory under their control and may have skipped the country.
The besieged Islamic militia confirmed the death in a US bombing raid of Mohammad Atef, bin Laden's right hand man, while US war planes pounded the last pockets of Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, witnesses and press reports said.
Tough talks were also under way Sunday -- in Kabul for the speedy creation of a broad-based post-Taliban government and in Kandahar for the peaceful surrender of the Taliban stronghold.
Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban envoy to Pakistan, told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency that bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks that claimed some 5,000 lives in the United States, is no longer "in an area under our control."
"The situation in the zones under our control has changed a lot and we have problems with communications," added Mohammad Tayeb Agha, a spokesman for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
"It is difficult to say if bin Laden is in Afghanistan or outside the country. We cannot say with certainty where he is."
Northern Alliance interior minister Younis Qanooni dismissed the Taliban claims, saying bin Laden is hiding at a base 130 kilometers (80 miles) east of Kandahar.
"The Taliban are trying to cheat the international community so that they stop the aerial bombardments," Qanooni said. "According to my information, bin Laden is still in. Maruf. He has training camps there and strong underground bunkers."
"I think he is still in Afghanistan and that it is getting harder for him to hide," Powell told Fox television.
He also dismissed fears that bin Laden has nuclear weapons.
"I don't think he has a nuclear weapon... it doesn't seem to me that we've seen anything that would suggest he had one or was close to having one," Powell said.
The conflicting reports on the whereabouts of bin Laden came after the Sunday Times newspaper, quoting defense sources, said US and British forces had narrowed the search for the world's most wanted man to 78 square km (30 square miles) of rugged terrain in southern Afghanistan.
Zaeef also confirmed to AIP that Atef, believed to be al-Qaeda's military chief and bin Laden's "right arm", was "martyred in the US bombing of Kabul," although he did not say when.
Atef, a former Egyptian policeman with a five million dollar (5.6 million euro) US government reward on his head, was accused of organizing the September 11 attacks, as well as the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and assaults on US troops in Somalia in 1993.
He was considered to be bin Laden's closest and most trusted aide, widely believed to have been in charge of al-Qaeda training camps and "the main link with other organizations, supporters and donors," according to a Pakistani source.
The source, who is close to bin Laden, said Atef "was like Osama's right hand. If Atef is killed, Osama has lost his right arm."
US forces struck Sunday at the provinces of Kunduz, in the north, and Nangarhar and Paktia, in the east, as well as the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, in the south, AFP reporters and AIP said.
On Sunday, four US bombers, including a B-52, targeted Taliban positions near Kunduz as hundreds of Northern Alliance troops, backed by at least two tanks, were seen deploying on the front line.
The Northern Alliance says nearly 30,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban troops, a third of them Arabs, Pakistanis or Chechens, are holed up in the Kunduz area.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that al-Qaeda slaughtered 150 Afghan Taliban troops there Friday to prevent them from defecting to the Northern Alliance.
"A commander who was foreign gave the order for 150 local Afghan Taliban to be killed because they wanted to surrender," a civilian who fled Kunduz Saturday told the paper. "They showed them no mercy."
He said the massacre followed the defection of 1,000 Afghans under Taliban General Mirai Nasery.
Some Taliban commanders in Kunduz have contacted the Northern Alliance to "surrender unconditionally," Qanooni confirmed.
"Others have asked for guarantees and assurances as to their safety before surrendering, while some have vowed to continue the fight against the Northern Alliance," he said.
At least 140 people died in US raids over the past two days, AIP said, including 46 in and around Kandahar, 62 in the Paktia town of Khost and 30 in Shamshad, eight kilometers (five miles) from the Pakistan border, in Nangarhar province.
In Kandahar, tribal leaders renewed efforts to negotiate a peaceful surrender of the city.
"The atmosphere... is tense but there are no reports of fighting," said Hamid Karzai -- one of three Pashtun tribal elders trying to coax Taliban defections -- told AFP by satellite phone from neighboring Uruzgan province. "We are continuing negotiations for a peaceful transfer of control in the city."
Karzai said some Taliban officials in Kandahar had agreed with supporters of exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah to join a national reconciliation government, but declined to give names because it "could endanger their safety."
Burhanuddin Rabbani, the UN-recognized President of Afghanistan and nominal head of the Northern Alliance, pursued his efforts in Kabul to form a broad-based government acceptable to Afghanistan's myriad ethnic groups.
After his triumphant return to the capital Saturday, five years after he was ousted by the Taliban, Rabbani sought to dispel fears that his return could spark new bloodshed and tribal feuding.
"We will try to form a broad-based government as soon as possible," he said.
His foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, told CNN after meeting UN envoy Francesc Vendrell that UN-backed talks would be held "in the coming days."
Vendrell is seeking to promote a power-sharing council under Zahir Shah's aegis and urging the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance to meet other Afghan factions in a neutral country, a UN official said.
Abdullah, who traveled Sunday to Tashkent, gave assurances that the Alliance had no intention of monopolizing a future government.
"The recent victories... by no means suggest that we want to impose our own solution on the region," he said. "In fact, it will encourage us to speed up our cooperation with our national and international partners."
A Russian delegation of defense, interior and emergency ministry officials arrived in Kabul Sunday by helicopter from Dushanbe for talks with Rabbani.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in Moscow that the delegation would try to "establish working contact with the leadership of the legitimate government" of Afghanistan.
Tensions simmered meanwhile between the Alliance and its Western backers over the deployment of 100 British Royal Marines at the Bagram air base near Kabul to prepare the ground for more troops to help guard aid supplies.
Alliance defense minister Mohammad Quassim Fahim told AFP that the troops were operating without the agreement of the anti-Taliban coalition.
"The British forces perhaps have an agreement with the UN but not with us," he said.
British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told The Observer newspaper that the deployment of more British troops to help guard humanitarian aid would depend on the situation on the ground, which he described as "pretty grim.”
The commandos already deployed will be pulled out once they complete their mission to prepare for more drops of humanitarian aid, he said.
Four Italian naval vessels, meanwhile, including the aircraft carrier Garibaldi, left the southern port of Taranto to join the US-led campaign.
In Madrid, an investigating magistrate charged eight suspected al-Qaeda members of being "directly involved with the preparation and carrying out of the attacks perpetrated by the 'suicide pilots' of September 11.”
In London, at least 10,000 peace demonstrators, including politicians and Muslim community leaders, marched through the city center, demanding an end to the war KABUL (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
