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Taliban Admit Heavy Casualties, Fighting Claimed Near Kandahar
KABUL, Nov 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Northern Alliance commander claimed Thursday that anti-Taliban forces were moving on Kandahar, the Taliban's southern stronghold, as the militia admitted its forces have suffered "countless" deaths in the U.S.-led military campaign.
As representatives of rival Afghan factions - united by their opposition to the Taliban - held talks in Bonn, Germany, Alliance commander Besmillah Khan told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that alliance forces were working with U.S. troops and local tribal fighters in the offensive on Kandahar and predicted the city would fall within a week.
"There is fighting close to the city," said Besmillah from Kabul, where he was receiving reports from his commanders in Kandahar province.
He said anti-Taliban forces were coordinating their operations and that alliance forces joined with U.S. troops and local tribal fighters in the battle for the southern city.
"Naturally, we have cooperation with each other. Our operation is not yet completed.
"The [U.S.] ground troops need guidance and information on where to go where the Taliban is and where is safe.
"Those [tribal] forces are linked with us and cooperating with the Americans."
In Washington, U.S. President George W. Bush was upbeat. "In a short period of time, most of the country now is in the hands of our allies and friends," he said.
Senior Pentagon officials, however, said that no major move southwards by Northern Alliance forces had come to their attention.
Abdul Salam Zaeef, the ousted regime's former ambassador to Pakistan, told reporters in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore, meanwhile, that the Taliban had taken "heavy" casualties in the fighting since October 7.
"Our communication system is crippled, that is why we don't know the exact number of casualties," he said. "The number of martyrs is countless. We don't even know how many are alive and where they are hiding."
Zaeef also suggested that remarks attributed to suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden earlier this month that he had nuclear weapons were fabricated as part of a "conspiracy." He did not elaborate.
Neither bin Laden nor his Taliban protectors possess nuclear arms, he said, adding however that they would not hesitate to use such weapons if they had them.
But he sidestepped a question about the possibility of the Taliban negotiating a truce. "Any decision in favor of war or truce will be done keeping in view the interests of the people of Afghanistan," he said.
In Washington, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, the deputy director of operations of the Joint Staff, said he had not seen any reports "that indicate that there are opposition groups from the north that have moved in large force to the south" of Afghanistan.
The claim raised concerns that an emboldened alliance - a loose conglomeration of ethnic Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara forces - may intend to move out of its traditional areas in the north into the Pashtun tribal areas of the south, setting the stage for conflict among Afghan ethnic groups.
"There have, in fact, been opposition groups, some of which are from the north, that have been around the Kandahar province, to the north of the Kandahar province," Stufflebeem said. "I can accept that they may have entered the province, not in a large movement."
The Taliban, which once controlled 90% of Afghanistan, has been reduced essentially to a few dust-bowl provinces around its southern citadel of Kandahar, where the militia has vowed to fight to the last.
In a further blow to the fast-crumbling regime, U.S. officials said in Washington the militia's intelligence chief was believed to be among senior Taliban officials who have defected to opposition forces in Afghanistan.
Stufflebeem also claimed the Taliban's control over their forces have been "fractured" with some Taliban commanders negotiating the surrender of their troops with others preparing to dig in and fight to the end.
Kandahar itself is ringed by opposition forces in active negotiations with the Taliban inside, he said.
There also were reports that could not be independently verified that Northern Alliance forces have captured the son of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Muslim cleric convicted in a 1995 plot to bomb New York City landmarks, a U.S. official told AFP.
Victoria Clarke, chief Pentagon spokesperson, said U.S. warplanes concentrated their air strikes Wednesday on cave complexes south of the eastern city of Jalalabad and near Kandahar that are believed to be used as hideouts by the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization.
The number of U.S. Marines at a base in southern Afghanistan, meanwhile, climbed to around 1,000 said Clarke.
Meanwhile, Alliance and rival Afghan groups meeting for a third day at a hilltop hotel outside Bonn said they were fine-tuning details of a historic power-sharing deal.
"We hope that we reach a complete agreement in the two coming days that will bring peace to the country," said Yunus Qanooni, who heads the Northern Alliance's delegation to the U.N.-sponsored talks.
The U.S. administration also expressed optimism about the conference, with Secretary of State Colin Powell noting "rather steady progress."
The four groups at the meeting, dominated by the alliance and representatives of the Rome-based former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, focused on setting up a parliamentary-style supreme council and a cabinet-style interim authority.
The two institutions are suggested in a U.N. blueprint for Afghanistan's future, designed to pave the way for a
Loya Jirga, or traditional "grand assembly" of tribal elders, to be held in March or April next year.
The Loya Jirga would in turn lay the groundwork for a broad-based government and possible elections.
In a further sign bridges were being built between the main players, Qanooni described the ex-king, widely seen as a unifying force and key to winning over the majority ethnic Pashtuns in the south, as "a prominent national figure."
The talks, scheduled to continue until Saturday, cleared another hurdle when Qanooni, reversing earlier positions, stressed the alliance's willingness to accept a multinational force once an interim government is in place.
Elsewhere, the United Nations reported its food convoys from Pakistan to Kabul, which cross a lawless stretch of road, were traveling safely as 69 trucks with 2,000 tons of aid had arrived in the Afghan capital.
The Afghan Islamic Press reported, meanwhile, that Taliban troops publicly hanged an Afghan man suspected of spying for the United States at a main intersection in Kandahar, wrapping his satellite phone around his corpse as a warning.
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