Tora Bora | Wednesday
US BOMBERS were back in action in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday after besieged al-Qaeda forces failed to meet a surrender-or-die deadline and put forth conditions to lay down their arms.
A US B-52 carried out two raids from 8:50 am (0420 GMT) – 50 minutes after the deadline expired — in the White Mountains, dropping its bombs in a zone further south and closer to the Pakistan border than in previous strikes.
More raids followed around midday.
”The al-Qaeda fighters had agreed to surrender today but we have received no report to this effect so far,” a representative for a senior Afghan militia commander said an hour after the deadline passed.
On Tuesday, commander Haji Mohammad Zaman said that all al-Qaeda fighters holed up on Tora Bora mountain had agreed to surrender by 8:00 am (0330 GMT).
In Islamabad, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency reported that the mostly foreign fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden, believed to number about 1 000, wanted to be handed over to the United Nations in the presence of diplomats from their respective countries.
It was still not clear whether bin Laden was in the Tora Bora region, although US officials said on Tuesday there were ”indications” he was there.
”There were some indications that Bin Laden was in the area” when a 7,5 ton Daisy Cutter bomb was dropped over entrances to the Tora Bora cave complex over the weekend, a US official said.
ABC News reported on Tuesday that the blast sparked a series of panicked radio and satellite telephone calls among al-Qaeda members, confirming that the Saudi-born dissident and his entourage were still in the region.
ABC said US forces were using aerial surveillance to track several groups of al-Qaeda fighters as they attempt to flee, saying intelligence sources believe Bin Laden is with them.
Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is also believed to be still in Afghanistan, but US officials think nearly all other top Taliban leaders have escaped into Pakistan, NBC News reported, quoting Pentagon sources.
Pakistani officials, who said on Tuesday that they had poured men and materiel to their border area near the White Mountains to prevent any infiltration, denied the NBC report.
”This is totally baseless,” Interior Secretary Tanseem Noorani said. ”We have no evidence to that effect.”
US officials were clearly worried, however, that Bin Laden could slip away.
”It is a porous border,” US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Washington. ”It’s a long border… there’s just simply no way you can put a perfect cork in the bottle.”
US officers in southern Afghanistan have said that Taliban fighters would be free to go if they handed in their weapons, but that all al-Qaeda members would be detained and questioned – or killed if they refuse to lay down arms.
In Kabul, negotiations continued between UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and members of the new Afghan administration to take over on December 22 about the presence in the capital of UN-mandated international peacekeeping force.
A defence ministry representative said the dominant Northern Alliance favours an international force of 1 000 soldiers in Kabul to guard the premises of the new interim government.
Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, who will retain his post in the new cabinet, delivered the message to Brahimi on Tuesday, representative Barna Salihi said.
Brahimi said on Tuesday that a disagreement over the withdrawal of alliance soldiers from Kabul still had to be agreed.
Anti-Taliban Afghan groups, in an agreement reached last week in Bonn on the future of the country, had agreed to demilitarise the city and hand policing duties to a UN-mandated force, but Alliance officials have since signalled they want to limit its scope.
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain was willing ”to play a leading role” in the international force, but stressed after talks with US Secretary of State Colin Powell that a formal decision had yet to be made.
Hamid Karzai, chosen by the Bonn conference to head Afghanistan’s interim administration, is expected to arrive in Kabul later on Wednesday from the southern city of Kandahar, Salihi said.
”He is moving to Kabul. He has sorted out all the problems in Kandahar,” he said, adding that Karzai planned to meet Fahim after his arrival.
In San Francisco, captured US al-Qaeda fighter John Walker Lindh’s lawyer released a letter the 20-year-old had written to his parents.
According to James Brosnahan, a San Francisco criminal attorney who is representing Lindh, the letter was dictated to an ICRC volunteer on December 3 and faxed to the prisoner’s parents in northern California on December 11.
Lindh apologised to his parents ”for not contacting you in such a long time,” and said he was ”alive and well in Afghanistan and… in safe hands.”
Lindh, who went by the name of Abdul Hamid after converting to Islam at 16, is being held at the US Marine’s Camp Rhino in southern Afghanistan.
Officials in Canberra reported the capture of another Western convert to al-Qaeda, an Australian captured by Northern Alliance troops on or about December 9.
The 26-year-old was reported in good health, Attorney-General Daryl Williams said, but would not disclose where he was and said his identity was being withheld to protect his family.
But Channel Seven TV said he could be David Hicks, who approached them three years ago, seeking to sell a story about being a mercenary in South Africa or Afghanistan.
An Adelaide man who claimed to know Hicks said the Australian would be serving as a mercenary rather than someone committed to a cause, saying: ”I think he was… in it for the money and the excitement.”
There was speculation Hicks could be held in the same US base where Lindh is detained.
In Washington, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the first indictment in the probe into the September 11 terrorist attacks, charging a French national with six counts of conspiracy.
Zacarias Moussaoui (33) of Moroccan origin, was indicted on counts that include conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, destroy aircraft and murder US employees, to conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.
The indictment also names bin Laden and other al-Qaeda members as unindicted co-conspirators, including Ayman al-Zawahri, Bin Laden’s Egyptian number two. – Sapa-AFP