Taliban Leader Attacks U.N. Report

By Kathy Gannon
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, Nov. 30, 1999; 2:09 p.m. EST

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan –– Afghanistan's Taliban leader offered Tuesday to take U.N. officials to the battlefield to debunk U.N. accusations that his forces have recruited children as soldiers.

Mullah Mohammed Omar said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was spreading "baseless and wrong propaganda," Taliban spokesman Tayyab Aga said from Afghanistan.

In a statement, Omar sharply criticized Annan's annual report on Afghanistan and said he should retract his comments. The report released Monday was a scathing indictment of the Taliban, accusing the religious militia of recruiting soldiers as young as 14 from religious schools in Pakistan.

"We are surprised that a person like Kofi Annan would say the things that he has said," Omar said in his statement. "We will be compelled to ask the United Nations officials to get into trucks and vehicles and take them to the front line and see for themselves that there are no children fighting."

Nearly a year ago, Omar issued an edict against child soldiers. He warned Taliban commanders that they would be punished if young fighters were found in their ranks. However, the punishment wasn't specified.

Aga, in a telephone interview from Kandahar, the Taliban's headquarters in Afghanistan, said the Taliban have established commissions throughout the country to look for offending commanders and punish those who recruit children.

Annan's report criticized the Taliban for "massive and systematic violations of human rights." He accused the Taliban of summary execution of women and children, forced displacement, looting and burning of homes and crops, detention and the separation of men from families.

Also Tuesday, Erick de Mul, the U.N. coordinator on Afghanistan, arrived in Kabul, the Afghan capital, to meet Taliban officials to discuss feeding tens of thousands of refugees. An estimated 60,000 Afghans are living in desperate conditions in enemy-held territory in the Panjshir Valley.

The United Nations and the Taliban have had a troubled relationship since the religious militia took control of Kabul in 1996 and imposed its strict version of Islamic law that bans women from work and school and forces men to pray in a mosque five times a day.

On Nov. 14, relations worsened when the United Nations imposed limited sanctions on the Taliban to press a demand that they hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden for trial either in the United States or a third country.

The Taliban have refused, saying that there is no proof of bin Laden's involvement in last year's twin bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. They also say that Afghan tradition and culture forbids turning a guest over to his enemies.