The Taliban offered on Sunday to give up their sole northern stronghold, Kunduz, if Arab and other foreign fighters holding out there were spared, amid reports that the opposition Northern Alliance had agreed to a conference at a neutral site to plan a multi-ethnic government.
The offer to surrender Kunduz came after US bombers unleashed their heaviest strikes ever on the city, said AP, which added that warplanes were also reported in action near the Taliban southern stronghold of Kandahar and areas of eastern Afghanistan where suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden is believed to maintain hideouts.
The situation is becoming more desperate in the besieged city, according to reports.
One source inside Kunduz told CNN that some 60 Chechens fighting for the Taliban drowned themselves in the Amu River rather than give up, and a Northern Alliance commander told the network that 25 trapped Taliban fighters fatally shot one another when they saw opposition troops advancing toward them.
Witnesses told AP that at least 100 Taliban soldiers were shot, apparently by gunmen from their own side, as they approached rebel lines in an attempt to surrender.
Meanwhile, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, told reporters Sunday that the Taliban still controlled the city of Kandahar and several surrounding areas, including Qalat, Tarin Kowt and Helmand, said CNN.
In Kandahar, the Taliban appeared to be retaining control despite a reported deal last week for their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, to leave the city, said AP, adding that the situation there was tense.
CONFERENCE COULD RESULT IN MULTI-ETHNIC GOV'T
Amid the ongoing fighting, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that the Northern Alliance had agreed to take part in UN-brokered talks with other Afghan factions about forming a new power-sharing government in Afghanistan, reported AP.
The head of the alliance, deposed president Burhanuddin Rabbani, said Saturday his group supported such a conference but wanted it to take place in Kabul, but the agency said the UN was pushing for a neutral site.
Following talks in Uzbekistan with US envoy James F. Dobbins, the alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, said the meeting ``will be held outside Afghanistan,'' possibly as early as this week, added AP.
The Western allies have been anxious to set in motion the formation of a broad-based - if not necessarily democratic - government, to head off a possible slide into the kind of factional and ethnic infighting that killed tens of thousands of Aghans the last time the Northern Alliance held power.
The alliance is chiefly made up of ethnic minorities such as Uzbeks, Tajiks and minority Shiite Muslim Hazara, while the Taliban are based in the majority Pashtun population.
Russia and its former satellite states in Central Asia have been backing a strong Northern Alliance government, while former US ally Pakistan, which helped create the Taliban, is pushing for a larger Pashtun role.
BIN LADEN'S PURSUERS CLAIM NET IS TIGHTENING
US officials said Sunday they believed Osama bin Laden was still in Afghanistan and that "the noose is tightening" around him and other leaders of his Al Qaeda organization, reported CNN, adding that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said they did not believe bin Laden had acquired nuclear weapons.
Bin Laden is probably still in Afghanistan with less and less room to move around, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday, cited by Reuters.
``I think he's still in Afghanistan,'' Powell said on Fox News, reported the agency, adding that he had seen no intelligence suggesting that bin Laden, accused of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the US, had left the country.
AFP quoted Northern Alliance Interior Minister Younis Qanooni as dismissing Taliban claims that bin Laden had gone abroad, saying he was 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 the agency. "According to my information, bin Laden is still in Maruf. He has training camps there and strong underground bunkers."
Asked about evidence that bin Laden had been trying to acquire nuclear weapons, Reuters quoted Powell as saying: ``I don't think he has a nuclear weapon, I think that's quite unlikely. The material we've seen ... certainly suggests he was interested in one and they were moving in that direction but it doesn't seem to me we've seen anything that would seem to suggest that he had one or was close to having one.'' - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
