KABUL - Afghan authorities say the former Taleban Foreign Minister, held by the United States military after he reportedly gave himself up, should be put on trial to answer for crimes committed during the Islamic militia's hardline rule.
The surrender of Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil has raised hopes that other Taleban leaders may turn themselves in.
Muttawakil, the highest Taleban official known to be in custody, surrendered to Afghan authorities in Kandahar and is being questioned at the southern city's US-commandeered airfield.
Muttawakil could provide information about the movements of al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in the regime's final days.
"This is a moment that we have been waiting for - to make sure that these individuals face trial, either in Afghanistan or outside Afghanistan, for their actions and deeds in the past," said Omar Samad, an Afghan Foreign Ministry spokesman. "It's about time that a known Taleban figure who held a position of authority is turning himself in and hopefully others will be caught later."
Scoffing at Muttawakil's reputation as a Taleban moderate, Samad said the Afghan Government would like to "interrogate him for a while" and wants him tried by US, Afghan or international authorities.
"What we do insist on is that he does face trial and he does face some type of justice and answer questions about his past involvement in terrorism activities and human rights violations during the Taleban regime.
"These are crimes against humanity that include massacres and atrocities, and cultural crimes including destruction of artefacts."
Echoing Samad's view, interim Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said the Taleban leaders "created misery for our people".
"The world has suffered because of what they did. They deserve justice and to be treated as war criminals because they supported terrorism."
Muttawakil was considered Omar's right-hand man, and Abdullah said he had been living in the Pakistani city of Quetta with other leaders who had fled Afghanistan.
"I don't know how it happened that he finally gave himself up. This might have been with the aid of the Pakistani authorities," Abdullah said.
Pakistani authorities in Quetta denied any knowledge of Muttawakil's surrender or handover to US forces, and a senior Kandahar political source thought he might have made a deal in return for his safety.
Abdullah warned yesterday that the Taleban movement was regrouping outside the country.
Some former leaders of the Taleban were forming new organisations to oppose the Government in Kabul.
"There are two organisations outside Afghanistan.
"We do not have details of the organisations or their structure but on the whole it is not acceptable that the Taleban be able to act either outside or inside Afghanistan in any capacity."
Most Taleban leaders who fled the country are thought to be in neighbouring Pakistan.
In other developments, the US is investigating whether it killed members of al Qaeda in a missile strike in southeastern Afghanistan last week, and the Bush Administration has come in for more criticism over the President's "axis of evil" claim.
Bad weather hampered the US search team at Zawar Khili trying to reach a remote spot where a CIA spy drone fired at several people believed to be al Qaeda last week.
A group of 34 prisoners captured during the Afghan war arrived at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, yesterday, bringing the total there to 220. The US holds another 237 prisoners in Afghanistan.
A senior US Army officer said interrogators were struggling to identify prisoners as Taleban or al Qaeda.
"A large number claim to be Taleban, a smaller number we have been able to confirm as al Qaeda, and a rather large number in the middle we have not been able to determine their status," said Brigadier-General Michael Lehnert.
In Kabul, about 270 Afghan Taleban prisoners were released in a ceremony at the presidential palace under the watch of leader Hamid Karzai.
"We decided some time back we should release everybody who did not have a bad record; who were not terrorists but just ordinary people," he said.
Also yesterday, the UN Secretary-General obliquely challenged President George W. Bush's description of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil".
While taking care to avoid directly criticising the President, Kofi Annan said it was unrealistic to see the world in terms of good and evil states "because between them there are shades of grey".
European Union Commissioner Chris Patten accused the Bush Administration of a dangerously "absolutist and simplistic" stance. It was time European Governments spoke up and stopped Washington before it went into "unilateralist overdrive".
Meanwhile, Afghan authorities have found evidence linking two detained suspects to the shooting dead of four foreign journalists last year, Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni said yesterday.
He said investigators were trying to determine if more people were involved. The two suspects were arrested a week ago on the outskirts of Kabul.
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