International
Forces close in on Omar hide-out
KABUL, JAN. 2. U.S.- backed Afghan forces vying for the honour of capturing the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, gathered in southern Afghanistan to march on a mountain village in Helmand province, where he was believed to be holed up.
The intelligence chief in Kandahar, Mr. Haji Gullalai, said he had asked Taliban fighters believed to be protecting Mullah Omar to hand over their leader or face attack. ``We have told them to give us Omar, but no ultimatum has been issued,'' he added. He said Government forces were closing in on Mullah Omar and the Taliban fighters who may be protecting him. ``We have two goals: to disarm irresponsible people and to get Omar, who is a criminal for the Afghan people and the whole world''.
In the Afghan capital Kabul, a reconnaissance team from 12 nations contributing to an international security force that will work with the interim Government in the city arrived today to assess the needs on the ground.
U.S. troops are still searching for Osama, who is believed to be in eastern Afghanistan or across the border in Pakistan. They are also gathering intelligence information left behind by his Al-Qaeda network.
U.S. Marines on Tuesday scoured a compound in Helmand province, according to the U.S. Central Command, which said they were not directly taking part in the hunt for Omar. The Marines, who left their Kandahar base in a pre-dawn convoy with helicopter gunship support, searched buildings thought to have been used by Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
Earlier reports suggested Marines may have been preparing to support Afghan allies in an assault on the village near Baghran. Elsewhere, anger simmered in Afghanistan over U.S. bombing since the overthrow of the Taliban and the rout of Al- Qaeda. U.S. military officials said a weekend raid in the east destroyed a compound used by Al-Qaeda fighters and their Taliban allies. A tribal leader there said it had killed more than 100 civilians in a village.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of Afghanistan's interim Government, Mr. Hamid Karzai, said he wanted the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan to continue until all terrorist activity was rooted out, but also expressed concern about mounting civilian casualties.
``We want to finish terrorists in Afghanistan - we want to finish them completely,'' Mr. Karzai said. ``But we must also make sure our civilians do not suffer,'' he said in an interview to the New York Times published on Wednesday. Asked when the civilian cost would become too high to justify the bombing campaign's continuation, Mr. Karzai said, ``We must make sure there is no civilian cost at all''. Mr. Karzai's comments came in the light of reports that upto 100 villagers had been killed in overnight strikes on Saturday. Mr. Karzai said he planned to take up the issue of civilian deaths with U.S. officials.
Since the U.S. began its bombing offensive in Afghanistan on October 7, there have been several reports of apparently mistaken strikes on civilians. Local Afghan leaders and the country's Interim Defence Minister, Mr. Mohammad Fahim, have called for an end to the U.S. bombing campaign.
U. S. officials and the Afghan Foreign Minister, Mr. Abdullah Abdullah, have said the air campaign would continue for as long as it took to finish off the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.
Mr. Karzai said he was planning to discuss the weekend U.S. bombing with elders from the affected part of the country, and has sent a helicopter to bring them to Kabul. He said while he supported actions against Taliban leadership, low-level Taliban, or ``common people'' recruited by force, would be released from prisons. ``The bad guys'' and foreigners who fought with the Taliban would stay in jail, he added. He said the lawlessness on the country's highways made it hard to import goods and deliver aid. He has raised concerns about Northern Alliance behaviour toward Pashtun leaders on their way to Kabul, including the theft of cars.
Economic issues are paramount, and healing Afghanistan's shattered economy is ``as important as security,'' Mr. Karzai said. The new Government is working to establish a customs system and a currency policy, and choose a central bank head, he said. ``That is a priority area,'' he said.
The reconnaissance team from the international security force in Kabul arrived two days after the Afghan administration and Britain initialled an agreement on deployment of about 4,500 foreign peace-keeping troops. The party of 20 from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Romania will spend two days in Kabul surveying conditions, a British forces spokesman said.
- Reuters
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
International
|
