The Taliban announced they would surrender Kandahar, their last bastion tomorrow, signalling the militia’s collapse two months to the day after the US launched its bombing campaign in Afghanistan.
However, a threat to the arrangement emerged from inside the anti-Taliban opposition with forces loyal to the former governor of Kandahar, Gul Agha, vowing to fight their way into the city.
Angry at being excluded from the surrender deal, Gul Agha was ready to advance on the city tomorrow, a source close to the former governor said.
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A rare photograph
of Mullah Omar |
The fate of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the founder and supreme leader of the Taliban, was also a sticking point in the surrender accord.
Taliban spokesman Abdul Salam Zaeef said Mullah Omar had agreed to surrender Kandahar only on condition that he would not be put on trial.
However Hamid Karzai, the premier-in-waiting of Afghanistan's newly established interim administration, said there would be no amnesty for Omar unless he renounced terrorism.
In Washington, US Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld ruled out any surrender deal that would allow Omar to live in "dignity."
"We have as our principal objectives to see that we deal effectively with the senior al-Qaeda leadership and the Taliban leadership, and that the remaining al-Qaeda fighters do not leave the country," Mr Rumsfeld said. "We want either to bring them to justice or bring justice to them."
Mr Karzai, who has been fighting the Taliban in the Kandahar area while seeking to negotiate their surrender, said Afghan footsoldiers of the Taliban could return home "without any trouble."
But foreign fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden - the so called "Arab Afghans" - are "criminals" who will be brought to justice, he said.
Kandahar has been under relentless US air attack for weeks and has been under assault by the forces of Gul Agha and Karzai.
In London, British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair heralded the surrender announcement as the final collapse of the regime and said the world " is a safer place" as a result.
Earlier, US aircraft continued their bombing of Kandahar, as well as an al Qaeda cave hideout in the mountainous east.
At Tora Bora, in the rugged White Mountains near the eastern city of Jalalabad, US B-52s dropped bombs on top of an elaborate tunnel and cavern complex.
Dozens of aircraft flew missions there overnight after anti-Taliban forces used tanks and mortars to attack al-Qaeda guerrillas loyal to Osama bin Laden.
The bombings come as an investigation into how a stray satellite-guided bomb killed three Americans got under way.
AP/AFP