WASHINGTON/KABUL, 21 November — The stage is now set for the first round of talks that it is hoped will eventually lead to the formation of a representative Afghan government. In the Afghan capital Kabul, UN envoy Francesc Vendrell announced that the talks could begin in Germany as early as Monday. The Taleban, he added, would not be represented. In an attempt to lower expectations, Vendrell emphasized that the initial round of negotiations would not lead to the establishment of a government. "We are simply having a first meeting and we are hoping to accomplish as much as the Afghan participants are willing to accomplish," he stated.
Former King Muhammad Zahir Shah, in exile in Italy since his overthrow in a bloodless 1973 coup, will also be represented. And the UN hopes Zahir Shah, a Pashtun like the Taleban, can play a unifying role in a broad future government.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell also opened talks in Washington yesterday, attended by 21 countries, on rebuilding Afghanistan economically.
"We are going to have an enormous obligation, not only the United States but the whole international community, to not leave the Afghan people in the lurch, and not to walk away as has been done in the past," Powell told delegates.
In Afghanistan itself, US bombers attacked strongholds of Osama Bin Laden’s long-time protectors. The Taleban came under attack around Kandahar in the south where Afghan Islamic Press said US airstrikes killed five people.
In the north the Taleban remained under siege in Kunduz province along with its foreign comrades-in-arms and forces of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group. The Northern Alliance offered amnesty to any Taleban fighter who surrendered in Kunduz but would not promise the same to the Taleban’s hated foreign comrades, including Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens.
"My hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said when asked about several thousand hard-line Al Qaeda fighters trapped in Kunduz, cautioning against letting the Taleban or Al Qaeda forces slip out of Afghanistan.
Northern Alliance officials said Al Qaeda troops, with no alternative but to fight to the death, were executing Afghan comrades who wanted to surrender. The reports could not be independently verified.
At Reuters offices, employees observed a minute’s silence for Reuters journalists Harry Burton, an Australian television cameraman, and Azizullah Haidari, an Afghan-born photographer, who were killed covering the war.
Witnesses confirmed the two journalists were killed along with correspondents Julio Fuentes of Spain’s El Mundo and Maria Grazia Cutuli of Italy’s Corriere della Sera when gunmen ambushed their convoy on Monday. It was unclear to which faction the gunmen belonged.
Washington said it had sent in more US military special forces to hunt for Bin Laden, believing the 44-year-old militant was still hiding in Taleban-held southern Afghanistan despite the Taleban’s assertion he was not there.
In Islamabad, the US-led anti-Taleban coalition said surrender is the only option for the Taleban and their foreign supporters in Kunduz. Coalition spokesman Kenton Keith said the coalition was not prepared to take their custody "at this point".
But he saw "every possibility" that the Northern Alliance forces negotiating surrender by the militants would show them the restraint and discipline that they had displayed in Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul.
Keith said the Alliance accepts coalition forces in the role of fighting terrorism and delivering humanitarian assistance but their peacekeeping role will have to be negotiated. Though the coalition had "considerable success" in its ground operations against the Taleban and Bin Laden, he said "the situation is fluid".
As part of its bid to capture Bin Laden, the US military was broadcasting a radio message into Afghanistan offering its reward of up to $25 million for information leading to the location of bin Laden, the Pentagon said.
"We’re hunting him down. He runs and he hides, but as we’ve seen repeatedly the noose is beginning to narrow, the net is getting tighter," US President George W. Bush told reporters in Washington.
Both Britain and the United States denied a rift between the two countries over sending troops to Afghanistan, despite media reports that the allies have different military aims in the war on terrorism. "The idea that there is some argument between ourselves and the United States is simply not the case," Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC, adding that British forces in Afghanistan were under Washington’s command.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told journalists: "The president sees eye to eye and is shoulder to shoulder with Prime Minister Blair."
According to two London dailies, The Times and The Independent, quoting defense and diplomatic sources, Washington is more concerned with hunting down Osama Bin Laden and getting rid of the Taleban regime than setting up a force to aid humanitarian activity. "The US is focused on going after Bin Laden and is far less inclined to engage in longer-term stabilization," The Times quoted a defense source as saying.
The newly reinstated governor of Herat said eight to nine million people face starvation in impoverished and drought-stricken Afghanistan and called for a war against illiteracy. Ismail Khan, who returned to power after the Taleban’s ouster from the western province, said at a meeting with Afghan women that 100,000 people had died during the five-year war against the militia since 1996.
The World Food Program said food aid is again being sent to Afghanistan from Pakistan after a six-day interruption caused by security concerns. The first food aid convoy left Peshawar Monday for Jalalabad. The journey passed off without incident, WFP spokeswoman Christiane Berthiaume said.
Yesterday, a 48-truck WFP convoy transporting 1,300 tons of wheat left Peshawar on the Pakistan-Afghan border for Kabul, the UN agency said. "On the other hand, there are still no convoys foreseen to be leaving Quetta," she told reporters.
