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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Sunday, November 25, 2001

Fighters Stream from Kunduz; Bush Vows to Prevail

More than 1,000 Taliban fighters surrendered to US-backed Northern Alliance forces besieging the Afghan town of Kunduz on Saturday while President Bush warned Americans of ``difficult times ahead'' as his war on terrorism accelerated.


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More than 1,000 Taliban fighters surrendered to US-backed Northern Alliance forces besieging the Afghan town of Kunduz on Saturday while President Bush warned Americans of ``difficult times ahead'' as his war on terrorism accelerated.

Despite the surrenders, thousands of Taliban troops loyal to Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, including Pakistanis, Chechens and Arabs, were holed up in the northern enclave and refused to give up as a deadline passed, keeping alive fears of a blood bath. Alliance fighters loathe the foreign soldiers.

``The Afghan Taliban have decided to surrender,'' one Taliban fighter who laid down his arms told Reuters. ``The foreigners have taken the decision to fight. They will not surrender.''

The fall of Kunduz, the Taliban's last bastion in the north would permit Northern Alliance forces and US warplanes to concentrate on forcing the radical militia out of its last strongholds in and around the southern city of Kandahar.

US air raids entered their 49th day in the campaign to punish the Taliban for harboring bin Laden, who is Washington's prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed more than 3,900 people.

Bush cautioned Americans celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday that the US war on terrorism, declared in response to the attacks, was far from over in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

``We will face difficult times ahead,'' Bush said in his weekly radio address. ``The fight we have begun will not be quickly or easily finished.''

With the Taliban folding under withering fire, preparations went ahead over the weekend for talks between rival Afghan factions, to be held by the United Nations next week in Bonn, Germany. They are aimed at producing a ``road map'' for a transitional Afghan government excluding the Taliban.

Although bin Laden's whereabouts were a mystery, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf ruled out on Saturday the possibility he had slipped over the border into Pakistan.

``We've made all arrangements to seal the border and to ensure checks. That includes even the army doing this,'' Musharraf said, adding, ``Also, we have got the cooperation of the local tribals holding the border areas to ensure that no such thing happens.''

US Warplanes pound kandahar
US warplanes have been applying relentless pressure around Kandahar, which the Taliban have vowed to defend at all costs out of duty to their strict interpretation of Islam.

About 65 long-range bombers targeted caves and tunnels that might provide hiding places to bin Laden and his al Qaeda network in raids on Friday.

As part of the air campaign, a powerful ``Daisy Cutter'' bomb was dropped this week near Kandahar. The bomb aims to devastate an area 600 yards across and demoralize enemy forces. It was only the third used in the campaign so far.

US special forces have stepped up operations, conducting lightning raids to cut Taliban supply lines by intercepting and blowing up transport trucks and oil tankers.

Increasingly, there were Taliban defections.

The Alliance unveiled on Saturday its prize defector, former Taliban Deputy Interior Minister Mullah Khaksar.

Hundreds of Taliban troops dug in at the dusty town of Maidan Shahr, west of the capital, Kabul, downed arms and agreed to join Alliance fighters -- a common practice in the civil war that has racked Afghanistan for a decade.

Some Taliban fighters were also reported to have swapped sides after surrendering at Kunduz. CNN showed Taliban soldiers shaking hands with Alliance fighters.

About 600 Taliban, including foreign as well as Afghan fighters, headed west to a surrender site near Mazar-i-Sharif, base of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Northern Alliance warlord.

Looking despondent, many tried to hide their faces from cameras. A truck carried the weapons they had handed over.

``We will now separate the local Taliban forces from the foreigners,'' Dostum told Reuters.

``We will also find out where the foreigners are from, and we will find out how many Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens, Uzbeks and Uighurs there are, and we will separate them all.''

Alliance commanders said 800 Taliban fighters surrendered east of Kunduz, bringing with them eight tanks, five anti-aircraft guns, seven rocket launchers and 40 vehicles.

One foreign Taliban fighter who surrendered killed himself and two other prisoners in a suicide grenade attack, Britain's Independent Television News reported.

``One of those foreign fighters pulled a pin in a grenade. He blew himself up, he killed the two former fighters beside him, and he also seriously injured one of the Northern Alliance commanders,'' the ITN reporter said.

LEGAL AFTERMATH RAISES QUESTIONS
Under surrender terms negotiated over the past week, Afghan Taliban fighters will be disarmed and freed, even though the United States opposes letting the defenders melt away.

``We will send home the Afghan Taliban soldiers who were not killing ordinary people and were forced to fight and also those who came from madrassas (religious schools),'' Dostum said.

Foreign soldiers who surrender will face an Islamic court, he said. But the foreign volunteers, hated by their adversaries, fear that justice will be summary.

A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that up to 600 bodies had been found in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, captured two weeks ago by the Alliance, underscored concerns about a potential blood bath.

The US military said it might use the Pacific island of Guam to lock up members of al Qaeda captured in Afghanistan.

Commenting on the legal aftermath of the conflict, Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who was chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal, said a plan announced by Bush earlier this month to try foreign terrorism suspects before military courts amounted to ``second- or third-class'' justice.

Speaking ahead of Tuesday's meeting in Bonn, Mary Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said Afghan leaders whose forces committed atrocities should be kept out of any future Afghan government.

Musharraf said he agreed with Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, whose government holds the rotating EU presidency, and European Commission President Romano Prodi on the need for a multiethnic post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.

The Northern Alliance, dominated by ethnic minority Tajiks and Uzbeks, has been backed by Iran, Russia and India, Islamabad's nuclear rival, fanning fears in Pakistan of a hostile government on its western border.

Islamabad is particularly nervous that the political talks due to start in Germany might marginalize the ethnic Pashtuns who make up about 40 percent of Afghanistan's population, as well as about 15 percent of Pakistan's.

But Musharraf said he was satisfied so far. ``This is a very good beginning, and we would certainly like the whole world community to back this process up,'' he said.

As efforts to establish a new, broad-based government for Afghanistan went ahead, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, nominal leader of the Northern Alliance, said he would set aside personal ambition in the cause of consensus.

Rabbani, the Northern Alliance leader who presided over years of chaos from 1993 to 1996 but still holds Afghanistan's seat at the United Nations, told Britain's Daily Telegraph he was ready to relinquish any claim to power.

``I will accept the decision of the (Bonn) meeting. I have no personal ambitions,'' he told the newspaper from Kabul.

A key aide to former Afghan King Zahir Shah threw his weight behind UN talks. ``It is unlikely that the talks in Bonn can resolve all the problems, but they are an important first step,'' Mostapha Zahir, the former king's grandson, said.

WIDENING WAR?
The US president vowed to pursue his war on terrorism relentlessly. ``Our enemies hide and plot in many nations,'' Bush said in his weekly address. ``They are devious and ruthless. Yet we are confident in the justice of our cause. We will fight for as long as it takes, and we will prevail.''

Bush has put countries that sponsor terrorism on notice that Washington could launch preemptive strikes against groups suspected of planning new attacks on the United States.

While military action in the US-led war on terrorism has been confined to Afghanistan so far, some officials have raised the issue of Iraq, where they suspect President Saddam Hussein of developing weapons of mass destruction.

There was good news for Bush's international coalition.

Germany's Greens party averted the collapse of that country's coalition government on Saturday as its members reluctantly accepted their leaders' support of plans to mobilize German troops for the Afghan war.

And France said on Saturday that Tajikistan is expected to allow the deployment of French fighter planes at a Tajik base for operations in neighboring Afghanistan.




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