BONN/KABUL, 30 November — Any progress toward moving Afghanistan away from the abyss, however tentative, is to be welcomed, and at talks in Bonn yesterday on filling a power vacuum left by the rout of the Taleban the four Afghan factions made some headway. The Northern Alliance raised hopes for a deal by saying it could accept international peacekeepers. The comments helped lessen suspicions among the Afghan exile groups of the Northern Alliance, which fought a bloody civil war to cling to power the last time it ruled Kabul in 1992-1996 and had seemed reluctant to accept such a force.

The Northern Alliance and representatives of the exiled former king have also reached an understanding on the broad outlines of a power-sharing deal as they went into their third, critical day of landmark talks.

These talks to move Afghanistan "away from the abyss" edged forward as US troops and tribal armies began to close in on suspected hideouts of the Taleban’s leader and Osama Bin Laden.

An eyewitness said US warplanes bombed the Taleban’s last major bastion, the southern town of Kandahar, where the militia was reported to have hanged a man in the main square accused of telling Washington where to strike. The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted a witness as saying that the man, an Afghan, was hanged after he was found with a satellite telephone and accused of spying for the United States.

Anti-Taleban forces said they were moving to Kandahar, where some said Taleban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar was still based. "We are moving toward Kandahar and we expect to be there in a few days," a spokesman for Gul Agha, a former Mujahedeen governor of the city, said by satellite telephone.

Others said Mullah Omar and Bin Laden, Washington’s main suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the US that killed some 3,900 people, might be either in the jagged ranges around Kandahar or the Safi Koh mountains near Jalalabad in the east.

In Germany, delegates involved in the talks said a consensus had emerged on the shape of a post-Taleban interim government, and that the groups were now discussing the detailed composition and candidates for a transitional body.

"We have agreed on the creation of a mechanism with the participation of all groups, particularly that of Rome," a top Northern Alliance official at the talks, Mehrabuddin Mastan, said. "We want to go ahead but we do not want to go too fast. We have to reach an agreement, but the second phase of talks has to be held in Kabul and the leaders have to go there," he added.

US troops already in Afghanistan on what they say is a strictly temporary mission geared up to track Bin Laden and his cohorts in mountainous terrain riddled with tunnels and caves. An unidentified aircraft overhead sparked a security alert at their base near Kandahar. Marines took up defensive positions until the all clear was given and buildings were evacuated, but gave no information on the aircraft’s fate.

A traveler crossing into Pakistan said earlier US war planes had bombed Kandahar and the border town of Spin Boldak. "They were also blowing up diesel tankers on the roads near Kandahar," said the traveler, Ataullah. He said conditions in the walled city were getting worse, with food supplies dwindling.

The spokesman for Kandahar’s former Mujahedeen commander Gul Agha, Khalid Pashtoon, said Taleban fighters were firing rockets at his men, who had advanced to within five km (three miles) to the south of the city’s airport.

Calls from Mullah Omar to fight on were the biggest problem. "He is definitely there, he wants to fight to the last drop of his blood," Pashtoon said.

The Pentagon denied reports that 160 Taleban prisoners were massacred by opposition forces in southern Afghanistan. "There have been reports of a massacre of 160 prisoners by opposition forces," Defense Department spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said at a briefing. "We have worked really hard to run this one to ground and reports are just not believable."

Pashtoon told Reuters on Wednesday that scores of captured Taleban fighters who refused to surrender last week were executed despite protests by US forces at the scene. He said tribal elders had also tried to persuade the Taleban to surrender before the battle last week for the strategic town of Takteh Pol.

"But they replied with abuse so we had no choice. We executed around 160 Taleban who were captured. They were made to stand in a long line and five or six of our fighters used light machine guns on them," said the commander, who declined to be identified.

The commander said seven or eight US military personnel who had been filming the fighting tried unsuccessfully to prevent the executions on Friday.

The United States welcomed the Russian presence in Kabul and said it had no concerns about Moscow’s commitment to the principle of a broad-based government for Afghanistan.

The Russians, who have close ties with the Northern Alliance now in control of Kabul, are setting up a relief center in the Afghan capital. They also plan to survey the wreckage of the old Soviet Embassy.

A US State Department official said Tuesday that the United States had urged several states including Russia not to recognize the Northern Alliance as the new government. US Secretary of State Colin Powell, asked about the Russian presence yesterday, said: "I’m not concerned. ... We’ve been in close touch as to what they are doing."