Khanabad | Wednesday
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.
”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.
”For the moment we are pursuing negotiations with local Taliban chiefs,” Mahmad said in Khanabad, some 20 kilometres east of Kunduz.
But he added that an offensive could be launched Thursday or Friday.
However, a representative for Kunduz governor Haji Mohammad Omar denied that any ultimatum had been delivered and said talks on a negotiated surrender were making progress.
”There is no such thing (ultimatum). Negotiations are under way and I am very hopeful that the outcome will be good,” the representative, Muhammad Gul Zubair, was quoted as saying by the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press.
”We want a peaceful exit of the Taliban,” Zubair said, adding that a senior Taliban commander had left with mujahedin leaders for the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif for talks with Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostam.
Dostam’s troops comprise a large component of the Northern Alliance forces surrounding Kunduz, the Taliban’s only remaining stronghold in northern Afghanistan.
US warplanes on 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.
”Afghan militia or foreigners who want to surrender are going to do it to the Northern Alliance, not the United Nations,” Mahmad said. He said the Taliban had no demands and only one goal: ”to be spared their lives.”
Mahmad said that his troops had not been in contact with foreign soldiers fighting alongside the Taliban, ”but if they want to leave Afghanistan, it is possible.”
With chances increasing of a major push on Kunduz by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, fears grew that the fighting could break down into a bloody settling of scores.
The United Nations said Tuesday it could not mediate the surrender of Taliban troops in Kunduz but urged all sides to avoid as much bloodshed as possible.
”We are appealing to everyone in the country to respect humanitarian law and the laws of war and keep the killings to zero if possible,” said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The Security Council had already issued a statement calling on all Afghan forces ”to refrain from acts of reprisal and to adhere strictly to their obligations on human rights and international humanitarian law.”
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, the state-run media in Islamabad said.
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 Defence 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. – Sapa-AFP