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Taliban Agrees to Talk Again with Pakistan amid Pressure
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban have agreed to talk again with Pakistan officials as pressure mounted on the hardline Muslim puritans to hand over the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, and avoid the wrath of the US military.
Revered Pakistani Muslim clerics and the country's chief spymaster returned emptyhanded late on Friday after failing to persuade Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden -- if in fact they discussed him at all.
Under siege from the rest of the world over their hospitality to bin Laden, and under attack from opposition fighters within, the Taliban's position has never appeared more perilous since they seized control of the country five years ago.
The clerics said their aim was not to discuss bin Laden, but to focus on talks on how to avoid war.
However, Taliban officials themselves raised the issue of US demands for the surrender of the Saudi-born fugitive wanted by the United States in connection with the devastating September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
"Discusion of Osama was not on our agenda," delegation member Mufti Mohammad Jameel said in Karachi on Saturday.
"But the Afghan Foreign Minister and Deputy Foreign Minister themselves spoke about Osama and said the Taliban will not hand over Osama," he said.
Washington has vowed to hunt down the Saudi-born fugitive and punish the Taliban for having protected him since 1996.
The revered Islamic scholars from Pakistan, who were accompanied on Friday to the southern stronghold of the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in Kandahar by Pakistan spymaster General Mahmood Ahmed, said their goal in the talks was peace and they had taken with them no agenda.
The 10-member delegation came back saying both sides had signed a declaration that agreed to further talks.
"The delegation talked to (Taliban leader) Mullah Mohammad Omar and with senior officials of the government," the Taliban's consul in Karachi, Rahmatullah Kakazada, said.
"They decided on future delegations to discuss further cooperation," he said.
The clerics are adherents to the Deobandi school of Islam from where the Taliban draw their strict interpretation of the Koran.
Pakistan government officials had hoped they might persuade Omar of the gravity of his situation and had sent along General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, to Kandahar to present Islamabad's view.
The 10-member delegation, over a lunch of boiled rice, meat, lassi (yoghurt drink) as well as grapes and pomegranates with Omar, agreed on the need for more such meetings, Jameel said.
GUNFIRE IN THE HILLS In the hills around Kandahar, Taliban fighters were seen preparing their defences for a possble US attacks, some of Friday's visitors said.
And indeed, as the team flew into Kandahar, residents of Kabul scurried for cover as the sound of anti-aircraft fire echoed around the hills surrounding the capital. It was just a test of the Taliban's defences, but highlighted the growing sense of insecurity among Afghanistan's people as a US attack loomed.
The United States is preparing the groundwork to bomb military installations in Afghanistan, according to a television news report on Friday, which said US planes would also drop leaflets and food for the Afghan people.
ABC News said on its "World News Tonight" broadcast that special forces already said to be on the ground in the landlocked central Asian nation were laying the groundwork for a campaign that would begin with the bombing of a number of strategic military installations of the ruling Taliban government, especially those related to air defence.
Taliban officials said bin Laden was believed to have by now received a hand-delivered fatwa (edict) from 1,000 of Afghanistan's leading clerics issued on September 20.
But no response had been received yet to the request for him to leave the country of his own free will and in his own time. The Taliban earlier had said bin Laden was missing.
That fatwa was endorsed by Omar, the Taliban's reclusive spiritual leader, and the message that bin Laden should voluntarily go was one of the themes of sermons at Friday prayers in the capital.
But defiance was another, and preachers called on the population to fight if the United States does attack.
"Jihad is the only way, and we will not sit quietly by if America attacks us," said a preacher at one of the city's main mosques. "All Muslims must defend their brothers and Osama in Afghanistan if that becomes the bottom line."
LAST DIPLOMATIC CHANNEL Pakistan, which gave the Taliban key early backing and helped them to seize power, is now the only country with diplomatic relations with the Afghan leadership and the last conduit through which any attempt to avoid conflict can be channelled.
On Friday, US civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said he was leaning against travelling to Afghanistan for discussions on bin Laden, but had made no final decision.
Such a scenario is seen as unlikely since Jackson is a Christian minister and Omar has met only two non-Muslims in his life.
Despite Omar's perilous position, he has responded defiantly so far by demanding evidence of bin Laden's involvement in the attacks on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The Taliban have refused to hand over bin Laden, citing a centuries-old Afghan tradition that insists on hospitality for all who request help + even at risk to the host's life.
The normally reclusive Omar has been unusually vocal of late, suggesting his grip on the Taliban may not be as secure as it once was.
He has ordered all Afghans to return to their homes after the United Nations reported millions of people on the move, either trying to flee the country or at least the cities for the safety of the countryside.
And he has warned his people that anyone helping the United States would face the wrath of his holy warriors.
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