|
Al-Qaeda Refuses to Surrender, Tora Bora Assault Continues
TORA BORA, Dec 13 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. aircraft continued Thursday to relentlessly pound mountain hideouts in eastern Afghanistan of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and hundreds of his al-Qaeda fighters.
Al-Qaeda fighters, in contact by walkie-talkie with Afghan militia commanders near the village of Tora Bora, again missed another deadline to accept a surrender. Besieged al-Qaeda leaders insisted they would only hand themselves over to a United Nations force, not the U.S.-backed Afghan forces.
Many of bin Laden's hard-core loyalists are Arabs like himself.
U.S. planes, which continued to bomb relentlessly as night fell, have cornered the remnants of the movement in a barren region about 25 miles south of Jalalabad.
Senior U.S. military officials denied reports that Al-Qaeda ever offered to surrender.
"There has been no surrender by al-Qaeda offered or accepted," General Richard Myers, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff told a Pentagon briefing.
The Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. special forces had landed overnight in Tora Bora and that U.S. helicopters had increased flights between Tora Bora and an airport in Jalalabad.
Local commanders said that surrender talks had taken place with bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters hold up in the mountains around Tora Bora.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that a previous surrender deal agreed between al-Qaeda and local commanders collapsed under U.S. opposition.
As surrender talks fell apart on Wednesday, anti-Taliban fighters announced a new Thursday deadline that passed with no sign of gunmen coming down from the hills - suggesting the idea of a surrender offer might have been a ruse by the trapped men.
"I heard an al-Qaeda fighter say on the radio they don't want to surrender," Haji Atiqullah, a spokesman for anti-Taliban commander Haji Zahir, told news agencies. "They said 'we want martyrdom, we will succeed.' They won't accept...I tried to talk to them yesterday but they did not want to."
"This evening we began a big ground attack against the Arabs and captured several heights," anti-Taliban commander Mohammad Aman said. Several of Aman's fighters were also reportedly wounded by U.S. "bombing errors" in the foothills.
The narrow, pitted and twisting road to Tora Bora from Jalalabad was choked with traffic. Pick-up trucks full of armed men traveled in both directions.
One Western security adviser familiar with the road said there were far more of the trucks than normal and speculated they might be preparing for a push on al-Qaeda hideouts to follow up the U.S. bombing.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan's new prime minister-designate, Hamid Karzai, arrived in the capital, Kabul, and was making the rounds of Afghan leaders, solidifying the political collapse of the former Taliban rulers and their al-Qaeda supporters.
He is due to take up his post as head of the interim administration on December 22, under a U.N.-brokered accord signed by anti-Taliban leaders in Bonn, Germany, last week.
Karzai also met ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani and other leaders in the presidential palace. He is staying at a guesthouse inside the sprawling palace compound.
Rabbani had complained foreigners imposed the government, from which he was excluded, but said he would back Karzai.
Karzai has been insisting that fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar be tried.
"He's a criminal," Karzai told the BBC. "Look at the years of oppression, lack of economic activity, the killing, the murder, the destruction of property, destruction of values."
United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, flew to New York after talks in Islamabad with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to discuss transferring power to the interim government. High on his agenda is a proposed U.N.-mandated multinational security force.
The dominant Northern Alliance, which captured Kabul last month from the Taliban, has said it favors a limited force of 1,000 soldiers in the city to guard the premises of the new interim government.
But European countries, led by Britain, are putting together plans for a force of several thousand soldiers.
Anti-Taliban Afghan groups, in the Bonn agreement, agreed to demilitarize the city and hand policing duties to a U.N.-mandated force. But Alliance officials reiterated they want to the force limited.
Under the Bonn accord, the interim authority will rule the country for six months after which a special loya jirga - a traditional council of tribal elders - will appoint a transitional government for up to two years.
Meanwhile, France and Germany announced Thursday they will press the European Union to take a strong role in the multi-billion dollar reconstruction of Afghanistan during the first European ministerial visit to Kabul in two decades.
A joint statement issued by French Cooperation Minister Charles Josselin and German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul called for a "swift and efficient" E.U. response.
"The international community is called upon to support the striving of the Afghan people to rebuild their country. We underline the preparedness of our countries to support the people of Afghanistan in this endeavor," it said.
"We shall take all necessary steps, with our partners in the European Union, to ensure a swift and efficient aid response from the European Community," the statement added.
Josselin told journalists that Berlin and Paris would ask the E.U. presidency to call a meeting of E.U. development ministers to forge a joint position ahead of an international donors' conference in Tokyo in January.
"We have already started to set aside funds but we have not decided what sum we will contribute," the French minister said.
The two ministers met members of the new provisional government that is to take power next week, including Defense Minister Mohammed Qasim Fahim and Interior Minister Yoonis Qanooni.
The United Nations, leading reconstruction efforts in war-shattered Afghanistan which could it says could cost from $6.5 billion to $25 billion, has proposed a five-year plan for the country.
|
