'Noose around Osama tightening'

KABUL, NOV. 20. Insisting that ``evil has no holy days,'' the U.S. bombarded Taliban strongholds today and vowed to tighten the noose around Osama bin Laden.

``We are hunting him down. He runs and he hides, but as we have seen repeatedly, the noose is beginning to narrow, the net is getting tighter,'' the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, told reporters in Washington. The coalition bombers struck at northern and southern bastions of the Taliban today.

The U.S. Defence Secretary, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, cautioned against letting the Taliban or forces of Osama's Al-Qaeda group negotiate flight from Afghanistan.

The Taliban came under attack around Kandahar where the Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. air strikes killed five persons today. It remained under siege in Kunduz province.

Talks in Germany

The Northern Alliance, which controls the Afghan capital and more than half the country, accepted a U.N. invitation to attend power-sharing talks in Germany with other factions beginning next week. This was announced by the Alliance's acting Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdullah Abdullah, and the U.N. envoy, Mr. Francesc Vendrell, at a joint news conference. Representatives of Afghanistan's former King, Mr. Mohammad Zahir Shah, will also attend.

Earlier, the head of the Alliance and former Afghan President, Mr. Burhanuddin Rabbani, said the opening session would be ``symbolic'' and he was sticking by his demand that substantive decisions on the future of Afghanistan could only be taken at meetings held in this country.

In Islamabad, the senior U.S. diplomat, Mr. Kenton Keith, who began daily briefings to the media on behalf of the coalition forces, said the coalition believed that Osama was still hiding in southern Afghanistan. The Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was also believed to be still in Afghanistan, he said.

Scribes' bodies recovered

Anti-Taliban forces today recovered the bodies of four foreign journalists, a day after their convoy was ambushed in a mountain pass near Jalalabad on the road to Kabul. The bodies were brought to Jalalabad and identified by their colleagues.

The journalists were identified as Australian television cameraman Harry Burton, Azizullah Haidari of Reuters, Maria Grazia Cutuli of the Italian newspaper Corrieredella Sera and Julio Fuentes of the Spanish daily El Mundo.

Musharraf appeal

The Pakistan President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has asked the U.S., the U.K. and the United Nations to come out with a humanitarian response to the surrender offer of thousands of pro- Taliban fighters holed up in Kunduz.

Gen. Musharraf spoke to the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, and the U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, over the phone to discuss the plight of pro-Taliban militants, including about 3000 Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis, an official statement in Islamabad said.

Meanwhile, a three-member team of the Qatar-based news channel, the Al-Jazeera, was arrested by the Pakistan authorities on Monday for allegedly entering the country illegally from Afghanistan.

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