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U.S.
Wants Taliban Force Surrender, Omar Deal Questioned
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| Rumsfeld
Seeks unconditional surrender |
WASHINGTON,
Jan 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The United States will accept only the
surrender of Taliban
forces holed up in southern Afghanistan and will not authorize pauses for
negotiations that could lead to their going free, U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald
Rumsfeld said Thursday, Jan. 3, 2002.
Rumsfeld's
comments came amid reports by Afghan intelligence officials that a besieged Taliban
commander in Helmand province has offered to hand over the militia's fugitive
leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and have his own forces lay down their weapons if
U.S. forces stop bombing.
Rumsfeld
said no such offer has been made and cautioned reporters that a number of Afghan
officials and anti-Taliban
commanders were acting on their own to negotiate a deal with the Taliban
holdouts in and around Baghran.
"We
are not authorizing - if anyone wants to know - pauses or negotiations which
would result in freeing people that ought not to be free, freeing of people that
kill other people as terrorists, freeing people that have a record of harboring
terrorists," Rumsfeld said.
"We are not in the business of authorizing any kind of negotiation which
would let people like that go," he said.
Rumsfeld added, however, that the United States did not control the actions of
their Afghan allies.
Taliban commander Abdul Ahad, known as the chief of Baghran,
offered to hand over Omar and to surrender along with his force of up to 1,500
men in Helmand province if U.S. forces stop bombing, Nasratullah Nasrat of the
Kandahar provincial intelligence service told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He said the
offer was made Thursday after a three-day "shura" - a meeting of
tribal elders - in Helmand.
"It hasn't been made," said Rumsfeld, when asked about the offer.
"I've already said what we would accept. We will accept surrender."
The negotiations have been followed with keen interest here, but also with
wariness, as key Taliban
and al-Qaeda leaders have escaped before from tight spots amid surrender
negotiations with Afghan tribal leaders.
Omar
was believed to have slipped out of Kandahar last month with hundreds of his
armed fighters after lengthy surrender negotiations with commanders of anti-Taliban
forces besieging the southern city.
Al-Qaeda
fighters, possibly including their leader, Osama bin Laden, opened surrender
talks after being cornered in the Tora Bora mountains, and then eluded Afghan
forces that had pinned them down.
Meanwhile,
the U.S. backed up its refusal for a pause in negotiations as warplanes attacked
a sprawling leadership compound and al-Qaeda training camp in eastern
Afghanistan Thursday after detecting activity there
B-1
bombers, F/A-18 fighter jets and AC-130 gun ships took part in the attack on the
compound, which had been struck before in a 1998 cruise missile attack, said
General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"There
was activity that warranted it be hit," said Myers.
He
said the site in Khost province near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan
was an extensive leadership facility consisting of a base camp, training
facility and caves.
It was the first U.S. air strike in Afghanistan in several days.
Rumsfeld said that with the Taliban
no longer in power, air strikes were becoming more "rare" but
emphasized that the United States would not give up the option as it pursues Taliban
and al-Qaeda leaders or pockets of resistance.
The
Taliban's
intelligence chief, Qari Amadullah, and his followers were targeted in an air
strike December 26 on a compound in the eastern province of Ghazni, said
Rumsfeld.
"We have no evidence that he is alive," Rumsfeld said of Amadullah.
Responding to charges that U.S. strikes have left civilian casualties or may
have been used by some Afghan commanders to settle scores with rivals, Rumsfeld
said the United States had relied on multiple pieces of intelligence information
in selecting its targets in recent attacks.
"If
you look at the amount of bombing that we've been doing in the recent week and a
half, why it's obvious that is not your first choice," he said. "You
don't have targets that are necessarily appropriate for bombing in large
numbers."
U.S.
AC-130 gunships, capable of laying down precision fire, but which do not drop
bombs, were "often a more appropriate weapon for precision targeting,"
he said.
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