KABUL - US and British special forces scoured southeast Afghanistan yesterday for militant fugitive Osama bin Laden as the Taleban, still holding their southern stronghold of Kandahar, said he was no longer in their territory.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he believed bin Laden was still in Afghanistan but with limited room to move.
In Kunduz, the last enclave held by the Taleban in northern Afghanistan, the opposition said Pakistani, Arab and Chechen guerrillas supporting the Taleban were fighting to the death, executing Afghan comrades who wanted to give themselves up.
"We have heard that a group of local Taleban tried to surrender in Kunduz but they were killed by the foreign soldiers," a Northern Alliance spokesman said.
Six Arab fighters had earlier blown themselves up rather than give in to advancing forces.
The Afghan Islamic Press said Taleban fighters in Kunduz told the Northern Alliance they wanted to withdraw with safe passage guaranteed by the United Nations.
The opposition said the US sent wave after wave of warplanes, including B-52 bombers, to batter Taleban positions at Kunduz, backed up by Alliance artillery fire.
US bombers also pounded targets around Kandahar, home of Taleban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
But there was no sign the Taleban were ready to abandon the powerbase they captured seven years ago, despite reports late last week of a deal to withdraw that would leave the city in the hands of fellow ethnic Pashtuns.
The military advance of the Northern Alliance, which swept into Kabul last week, has outstripped political progress on a future broad-based government for Afghanistan.
But the pace of diplomacy quickened at the weekend, with UN envoy Francesc Vendrell holding talks in Kabul, and James Dobbins, US representative to the opposition, doing the same in Tashkent.
The result was an apparent climbdown by the Alliance from its demand that talks on the future of Afghanistan be held in Kabul despite objections by its political rivals and the UN.
"It will be outside Afghanistan," Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said in Uzbekistan after talks with Dobbins.
He mentioned Germany, Switzerland and Austria as possible venues. A team of Russian officials arrived in Kabul yesterday to discuss a future government.
The Alliance also tried to patch up a row over the deployment of foreign troops. About 100 British special forces troops have landed at Bagram airport, north of Kabul, prompting complaints from some opposition leaders.
But Abdullah said their presence, to provide security for humanitarian aid, had been agreed to.
The proposed talks in Europe will be an acid test of the willingness of Afghanistan's tribal leaders and warlords to put factional chaos behind them and build an inclusive government.
The Pashtun majority and Shi'ite groups fear the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance will try to cling to power.
Many anti-Taleban groups want exiled former King Zahir Shah, 87, to head a new regime rather than ousted former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, who returned to Kabul on Saturday, five years after the Taleban drove him out.
Rabbani, 61, who still holds Afghanistan's UN seat, is unpopular even within some factions of the Northern Alliance.
- REUTERS
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