U.S. Hot on bin Laden Trail, but Other Plans Lag
http://www.iht.com/articles/39363.htmlCompiled by Our Staff
From Dispatches AP, Reuters
Tuesday, November 20, 2001
KABUL The American pursuit of Osama bin Laden is growing in strength and intensity, U.S. officials said Monday, but diplomatic efforts to install a broad-based post-Taliban government in Kabul and to provide humanitarian assistance for hungry Afghans are still moving slowly. . The Pentagon said Monday that more U.S. commandos have been put on the ground in southern Afghanistan to help with the hunt for Mr. bin Laden. Also, American warplanes pounded Taliban front lines just outside the city of Kunduz, where Taliban and Qaida forces have been holding out for days as the rest of the north has fallen to opposition forces. . With U.S. bombs still falling and the Taliban regime disintegrating, Bush administration officials have said that the chances of finding Mr. bin Laden are improving. . A Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, said that on Friday more American troops were sent into the country's southern regions, where special operations forces have been gathering intelligence and setting up roadblocks to try to catch Mr. bin Laden and his Taliban allies. There now are a few hundred Americans on the ground throughout the country, she said. . But the diplomatic and humanitarian initiatives are moving slowly. . In Brussels, EU foreign ministers warned Monday that reconstruction aid would depend on whether the new authorities in Kabul show respect for human rights. . Britain and France are trying to dispatch troops to secure Afghan air bases so relief supplies can be flown in, but most of the troops are still waiting outside the country. . As many as 6,000 British troops are ready, but they cannot take off until problems are sorted out, a spokesman for the British Defense Ministry said Monday. . "We are not going to deploy unless there is a clear understanding of the role and risk they face. It is a very fluid situation," the spokesman said. . An advance party of 85 British soldiers flew into Bagram airport north of Kabul last week, but the Northern Alliance reiterated its deep-seated opposition to foreign troops on Afghan soil. . British media reports have said that the larger deployment was delayed by the alliance's objections, but the Defense Ministry insisted that no specific date had ever been set. . On Monday, France said its troops had not left their base in Uzbekistan to start a security mission in northern Afghanistan, but a spokesman denied media reports of delays. . French radio and television reported that an advance party of 58 French marines has not been able to travel to the town of Mazar-i-Sharif in northeastern Afghanistan, citing an unspecified "holdup." . Speaking by telephone from Uzbekistan, a French military officer said that no date had been set for their departure but he denied that there had been any delays. . In the efforts to install a post-Taliban government, Francesc Vendrell, the UN special envoy, intensified his meetings with Afghan leaders in Kabul, but his spokesman said that there had been no breakthrough in organizing a political gathering to discuss the country's future. . "We would like to convene this meeting as fast as is humanly possible," said Eric Falt, a UN spokesman. "When we get an agreement with the Northern Alliance, it could happen in a matter of days." . The victorious alliance said last week that it would prefer roundtable talks on forming a broad-based government to take place in Kabul, which it occupied last week. . But the alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said in Uzbekistan on Sunday that the meeting could take place abroad, as demanded by the UN to allay the concerns of ethnic and political factions deeply suspicious of the alliance. Among the possible venues in Europe are Germany, Austria and Switzerland. . In another development Monday, four international journalists were missing and believed dead after gunmen ambushed their convoy in eastern Afghanistan. . Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero of Italy said that the deaths had been confirmed. . Apparently, armed men stopped a convoy of six to eight cars on the road between the capital Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad. Gunmen took the four journalists into the surrounding hills and then opened fire, drivers said. . "They took the journalists, and when the journalists turned to look at them, the gunmen shot," said Mohammed Farrad, one of the drivers. . The area has been controlled by anti-Taliban forces recently but some Taliban stragglers and Arab fighters still were believed to be in the area. The journalists were identified by their news organizations as Harry Burton, an Australian cameraman, and Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer, both from the Reuters news agency, and Julio Fuentes of the Spanish daily El Mundo and Maria Grazia Cutuli of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. . The Taliban, which have lost most of Afghanistan in recent days, continued to hold out Monday in the cities of Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south. . But a heavy weekend bombardment by U.S. planes and shelling by the Northern Alliance appeared to be taking a toll in Kunduz. . An alliance spokesman said negotiators had been trying to persuade the Taliban to surrender and to leave the city. Speaking from the nearby city of Taloqan, the spokesman said about 200 of the several thousand Taliban members in the embattled city surrendered Sunday. . The holdouts in Kunduz were increasingly desperate. Foreign soldiers fighting for the Taliban have begun killing their Afghan Taliban comrades in a desperate effort to hang on to Kunduz, refugees and Northern Alliance soldiers in Bangi told The New York Times. . The foreign soldiers, who have gathered in Kunduz for what appears to be a last stand, have shot and killed more than 400 Afghan Taliban trying to defect to the Northern Alliance, the refugees and alliance soldiers said. . The 400 were killed in mass shootings late last week, refugees said, and were prompted in part by the defection of a local Taliban commander. According to the reports, Arab and Pakistani soldiers with the Taliban have also begun shooting young men from the Uzbek and Tajik ethnic groups, suspicious that they have been trying to escape the area. "The foreigners came into the village and shot all the men," said Muhammadullah, a 21-year-old who crossed into alliance territory on Sunday. "I saw this with my own eyes."
(AP, Reuters, AFP, WP, NYT)
