KABUL/WASHINGTON, 19 December — Afghan leaders have agreed to accept an international security force of 5,000 troops in the war-torn country, Defense Ministry officials said yesterday.
But a major German newspaper reported that differences between Germany and Britain over the command of the force could delay the start of the operation.
The United States, meanwhile, warned yesterday that any country that might consider harboring Osama Bin Laden should learn a lesson from Afghanistan, where the US military helped to oust the Taleban government that sheltered him.
"I just think any country in the world that would knowingly harbor Bin Laden would be out of their minds," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in answer to a question at a news briefing at the Pentagon.
"I think they’ve seen what happened to the Taleban and I think that’s probably a pretty good lesson for people not to do that," Wolfowitz added.
He said the United States did not know where Bin Laden was after more than two months of US bombing and ground action.
In Kandahar, a Marines spokesman told reporters two C-130 transport planes came under fire over the southern desert from ground-to-air missiles believed to be US-made Stingers.
The C-130 aircraft fired flares to avoid being hit and neither aircraft was damaged, he added. But US Central Command said later that what was first believed to be an attack on two military planes in Afghanistan was nothing of the kind.
Marines Maj. Ralph Mills told Reuters flashes on the ground in the southern Afghan desert may have been part of celebrations marking Eid Al-Fitr.
Referring to the deployment of peacekeepers, Defense Minister Gen. Muhammad Fahim had said last week he wanted a maximum of 1,000 soldiers just to protect the fledgling government in Kabul.
Barna Salihi, a Afghan Defense Ministry official present at the three-way talks yesterday told AFP: "They have agreed on 5,000 or more peacekeepers."
The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted a spokesman for commander Haji Muhammad Zaman as saying the Afghan militia fighters who are holding dozens of Al-Qaeda fighters will hand them over to the new interim government and not to any foreign country.
"We had held talks with the central government of Hamid Karzai and agreed to hand over all the arrested fighters of Al-Qaeda to the government," the spokesman said.
"This is the central government and we will hand over the prisoners to them but not to any foreign country," he added.
The US Defense Department said Monday its forces were interrogating hundreds of prisoners held by Afghan opposition forces which drove the Taleban regime from power in recent weeks. It said it would seek custody of those it was particularly interested in.
Fugitive Taleban supreme leader Mulla Muhammad Omar was said to be holed up with 500 men in another mountain range to the south where ethnic Pashtun forces were preparing to attack.
In Islamabad, a senior US official brushed aside reports that Bin Laden had arrived in Peshawar. "I have no information," US envoy for Afghanistan James Dobbins told journalists when questioned about the report by an American television channel. The US Defense Department said yesterday US troops have found manuals on constructing conventional and biological bombs in facilities used by Al-Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan but no evidence that Bin Laden’s terrorist network was actually building the weapons,
The findings were preliminary results from a survey of about 50 sites throughout Afghanistan that attracted the interest of Pentagon officials, said Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Hamid Karzai, the man picked to lead the new Afghanistan, vowed yesterday that Kabul would take the fight against terrorism to "its absolute end" and promised to build an economically stable state.
Meanwhile, Saudis, Egyptians and Yemenis figure in a US list of most wanted international terrorists. Americans believe that Sheikh Syed, a Saudi, provided money to Muhammad Ata, the main character in the Sept.11 attacks.
