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Alliance Forces Near Mazar-i-Sharif as Key Leader Calls for End to Attacks
ISLAMABAD, Nov 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Afghan opposition forces, in their biggest advance of the U.S.-led war on the Taliban, were poised Thursday for a major assault on Mazar-i-Sharif, as a key anti-Taliban leader called for an end to the attacks on Afghanistan, news agencies reported.
Afghan tribal leader Hamid Karzai called for an end to U.S. bombing of Afghanistan and appealed for international help to rid his country of "foreign terrorists" fighting with the Taliban.
Karzai, who was speaking to BBC World, said he had entered southern Afghanistan several weeks ago, and was safe and well in the southern part of central Uruzgan province after walking for three days to evade capture by Taliban forces.
The influential Pashtun leader said he could defeat the Taliban without outside help, but needed assistance to help the country "regain independence" from other foreigners.
He also called for an end to U.S. bombing, and asked for the kind of help provided by foreign governments during the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
A member of the same clan as the ousted Afghani king, Karzai is now seen as the best hope for building an alternative ethnic Pashtun power base to the Taliban.
Another similar mission, led by former Mujahedin (Afghan fighter) leader Abdul Haq, ended in disaster.
Haq and several companions were captured and executed after their hideout south of the capital Kabul was surrounded by Taliban forces and a U.S. rescue attempt by helicopter failed.
Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance, backed by U.S. special forces, said it was closing in on the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif after a series of breakthroughs on Tuesday and Wednesday, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
After claiming to have moved as near as four miles to Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday, Alliance forces dug in at the village of Chishma-e-Shifa, about 14 miles to the south, a spokesman said.
Mazar-i-Sharif's airport and its location on a key supply route near the border with Uzbekistan, where more than 1,000 U.S. are troops are based, make it a major prize in the campaign.
There were no fresh air raids on the Mazar-i-Sharif front on Thursday, but U.S. bombers pounded front lines near Kabul and close to the Tajik border.
U.S. warplanes also targeted troops in intensifying attacks along the Shalami Plains and the Safy mountain range near the strategic Bagram air base, according to a CNN report.
A representative of an anti-Taliban Afghan faction in northeast Iran had claimed that U.S. warplanes touched down for the first time at Bagram Wednesday.
"On Wednesday, for the first time since the start of U.S. and British air raids on Afghanistan, a number of U.S. warplanes landed at Bagram," Mohammad Mohaqeq, a member of the Hezb-i-Wahdat faction, was quoted as saying by Iran's official IRNA news agency.
Bagram air base lies in a contested area between Northern Alliance and Taliban lines some 30 miles north of Kabul.
Attacks were also reported around Kandahar, the CNN report said.
The Taliban, for its part, denied the opposition had advanced on Mazar-i-Sharif, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency reported on Thursday.
"Opposition forces are far away from Mazar-i-Sharif and they are making false claims," AIP quoted a Taliban spokesman in Kabul as saying.
Opposition spokesman Qari Qudratullah acknowledged that Mazar-i-Sharif, a city of more than 200,000 people, would be difficult to take, given its importance for both sides.
But he told AFP the Taliban "have no air force any more, they cannot bring in reinforcements in large numbers and their morale is not as high as it used to be."
U.S. Marine Corps General Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed in Washington that the opposition was "making gains" and said U.S. special forces were reporting cavalry charges by the Northern Alliance.
"This is opposition forces riding horseback into combat against tanks and armored personnel carriers," he said. He added that the situation remained "very fluid."
Mazar-i-Sharif is at the center of one of three main fronts targeted by the Americans and their Afghan allies in the U.S.-led war against the Taliban for refusing to give up Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile accused by the U.S. of masterminding the September 11 attacks, which killed around 5,000 people.
Taliban intelligence sources in Jalalabad told AFP they had arrested 20 people, including two opposition commanders, accused of spying for the United States and trying to provoke a rebellion.
"They were working against the Taliban government and were trying to make a rebellion among the ranks of the people," an intelligence official said.
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