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Powell arrives in Tokyo for Afghan aid meeting
By Jonathan Wright
Saturday January 19, 9:09 PM
TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell arrived in Japan on Saturday for an international conference where donors are set to pledge billions of dollars to rebuild Afghanistan after 23 years of war.
The United States has promised a "significant contribution" to the reconstruction fund, but will not announce an amount until the two-day conference opens on Monday morning.
It is basing its estimates of Afghanistan's overall needs on those from the United Nations and the World Bank -- $1.7 billion in the first year, $10 billion over five years and $15 billion over 10 years, a U.S. official said.
But the official, briefing reporters on Powell's plane from Kathmandu, said the United States had already made a major contribution through its military campaign against the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and their al Qaeda allies.
"So that's why we don't necessarily insist on being the largest donor. We'll see what the others come up with," added the State Department official, who asked not to be named.
Powell met Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, in Kabul on Thursday and sought to reassure Afghans that the United States remains committed to help the country, even after it defeats the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.
"The Secretary spoke to Karzai of the strategic importance of Afghanistan... Powell made clear we are not going to walk away. He said that is emblazoned on the President's (President George W. Bush's) heart," the official said.
"People have fought over it for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's at a crossroads between Central Asia and South Asia, and it has been a source of terrorism and drugs.
"If we leave a hole in Afghanistan, what we are going to get out of that hole is more terrorism and more drugs," he added.
CRITICAL STRATEGIC FUNCTION
"Stability for us, even far way as we are, is important," the official said. "Stability for people like the Indians and the Russians is even more important.
"So it plays a critical strategic function to have a healthy, prosperous and stable Afghanistan," he said.
At least initially, the Bush administration will seek funds for Afghanistan in existing "global" aid accounts allocated for use anywhere in the world, avoiding the need to go to Congress immediately for approval.
It will focus on projects that stimulate agriculture, the rule of law, education, health care and women's programmes as well as ones that combat Afghanistan's production of opium.
Karzai promised Powell on Thursday that his government would do its utmost to prevent corruption and the diversion of aid funds, so that donors keep paying.
In television interviews later, Powell said this was crucial to the success of reconstruction.
"He (Karzai) understands perfectly well that if you do not use the money in a proper manner, if it doesn't go to people who need it, then there'll be no more money coming. The international community will not pour money down a rat hole," he told Fox News.
The Tokyo conference is jointly hosted by the United States, Japan, the European Union and Saudi Arabia.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who will also attend the conference, arrives in Tokyo on Sunday.
On Friday, Powell completed a visit to India and Pakistan, where he sought to ease tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.
He then travelled to Nepal, becoming the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit the impoverished Himalayan kingdom in three decades.
In Kathmandu he offered solidarity with the government against a Maoist insurgency but in talks with the Nepalese military on Saturday morning, the Nepalese did not ask for any weapons, the U.S. official said.
Any U.S. support for the Nepalese military would be "nonlethal", the official added.
Saturday January 19, 6:21 PM
KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai was due to meet Saudi Arabia's King Fahd and Crown Prince Abdullah on Saturday as he began his international campaign to drum up help for his war-battered country.
Karzai, who took office last month after the Taliban were crushed by U.S. airstrikes and Afghan rivals, arrived in Saudi Arabia on Friday and headed first to Mecca to perform umra -- a short Muslim pilgrimage outside the annual haj period.
U.S. efforts to hunt down terror suspects around the world after the September 11 attacks prompted fresh concern from the United Nations when American troops seized six Algerians in Bosnia on Friday.
The leading suspect, Osama bin Laden, is still at large, but Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf sparked a new round of speculation about his fate when he said the al Qaeda leader could have died from kidney failure.
The White House said it would welcome news of the death of the presumed mastermind behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon that killed about 3,100 people, but said the United States had no idea what had happened to him.
GLOBAL SWEEP
The global sweep for suspects continued as Malaysian police arrested seven more people with suspected links to al Qaeda, Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said on Saturday.
Prime Minister Mahathir has said police have identified about 50 Malaysians involved with al Qaeda.
In Sarajevo, the U.S. Embassy said American forces had taken custody of six Algerians detained by Bosnian authorities in October on suspicion of involvement in terrorism but released this week by a court.
The six are to be transferred to a U.S. internment camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where more than 100 captives from the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al Qaeda are being held.
Human rights groups have criticised conditions at the camp -- captives are held in chain-link enclosures and are not accorded prisoner of war status -- and the seizure of the six men in Bosnia prompted a fresh outcry.
"It's very disappointing," Madeleine Rees, head of the Bosnia office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said of the U.S. action. "It violates the rule of law."
The U.S. Embassy said Washington acted because the six "posed a credible security threat to U.S. personnel and facilities and demonstrated involvement in international terrorism".
In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, without referring directly to the prisoner transfer, said governments should not violate human rights in the war on terrorism.
"In the long term, we shall find that human rights, along with democracy and social justice, are one of the best prophylactics against terrorism," Annan told the Security Council.
DIARIES AND COMPUTERS
General Tommy Franks, head of the U.S. Central Command, said American forces scouring Afghanistan had found a great deal of al Qaeda material -- diaries, computer hard drives, whole computers -- which had helped head off possible terror attacks.
"We have learned an awful lot. We have not yet found any weapons of mass destruction," Franks said of the search for evidence that al Qaeda has developed biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
"We have certainly found a desire on the part of al Qaeda to have weapons of mass destruction," he said.
But Franks said the fate of Saudi-born bin Laden was a mystery. "(He) could be alive or dead, or in Afghanistan or not. We really don't know where he is."
Musharraf said earlier in television interviews he was inclined to believe bin Laden, who has a $25 million reward on his head, was dead.
"He is a kidney patient and I know that he has donated two dialysis machines to Afghanistan and one was specifically for his own personal use," he told CNN. "I really don't know whether he has been getting all that treatment in Afghanistan now."
The Pakistani leader told the Middle East Broadcasting Center that bin Laden "may have been killed because of the heavy bombing or he has died of a kidney problem".
KABUL NEEDS BILLIONS
As the search for bin Laden continues, Afghanistan's interim leader has begun his own quest -- for the money he needs to rebuild the shattered country.
Karzai, on his first foreign trip since taking office last month, is expected to leave Saudi Arabia later on Saturday for Tokyo to attend a conference of donor countries which is expected to raise billions of dollars in aid pledges.
Saudi Arabia has been a key player in Afghanistan's 23 years of war, first backing Islamic rebels battling Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s and then supporting the Taliban from 1996.
The Saudi government froze diplomatic ties with the Taliban in 1998 to protest at the presence of bin Laden in Afghanistan, and severed relations completely two weeks after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
It will co-chair a donors' meeting in Tokyo on Monday and Tuesday at which Afghanistan hopes to obtain funding for a reconstruction programme that will cost an estimated $10.2 billion over five years. Of this, $4.9 billion would be needed during the coming 30 months.
Japan's special envoy for Afghanistan urged the global community to commit to the long haul to rebuild the country.
Red Cross to question each Guantanamo prisoner
Saturday January 19, 3:59 PM
MIAMI (Reuters) - International Red Cross monitors hope to interview each Taliban and al Qaeda prisoner sent from Afghanistan to the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to ensure they are treated humanely, an agency official said on Friday.
A four-person team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) arrived at the isolated base on the eastern tip of Cuba late on Thursday to inspect the prison camp and conduct intensive interviews expected to last into next week.
Human rights groups accused Washington of treating the prisoners inhumanely after they were brought shackled and blindfolded from Afghanistan aboard military transport planes.
The first detainees landed a week ago, and with the arrival of a fourth group on Thursday there were 110 prisoners at the camp by Friday, when the ICRC team started work.
"The program will last for as long as there are people detained," Kim Gordon-Bates, an ICRC spokesman in Washington, told Reuters. "As long as there are people detained we will do our jobs."
The prisoners were captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan that ousted the Taliban rulers accused of protecting Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda network. Washington accuses bin Laden of masterminding the September 11 attacks on the United States that killed more than 3,000 people.
PERMANENT FACILITIES TO BE BUILT
The prisoners are being locked in cage-like cells measuring 6-foot by 8-foot (2-metre by 2.6-metre), with roofs and floors but open chain-link walls, until permanent holding facilities are completed at the camp.
The United States has denied the detainees prisoner-of-war status, which would grant them certain rights under the Geneva Convention. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said they were being treated humanely and held "in an environment that is a lot more hospitable than the environments we found them in."
Both the ICRC and United Nations human rights chief Mary Robinson have said they consider the captives to be prisoners of war.
The Red Cross team will inspect the cells, meet with the camp commander and assess the meals and medical care.
"We'll be looking at the food, the calorie content, the quality, the cultural conditions," Gordon-Bates said. "We will be looking at everything."
"We have to talk individually with each detainee, if of course the person wishes," he added.
The interviews will take about an hour each, longer if there are translation problems. With 110 prisoners at the camp, the current visit will last "well into next week," and other Red Cross teams will visit the camp as needed, he said.
Gordon-Bates said no restrictions had been placed on the Red Cross team, other than routine security precautions.
MAIL DELIVERY
The team also will offer to deliver mail and messages for prisoners who want to communicate with close relatives, Gordon-Bates said.
A spokesman for the U.S. military's Southern Command in Miami, which runs the operation, said the captives are allowed to write letters. No mention was made on whether the correspondence will be screened for security reasons.
They are given paper and pencils but must return the pencils when they finish writing "to keep the pencils from being used as weapons," said Captain Tom Crosson, a Southern Command spokesman.
U.S. officials consider the prisoners dangerous and possibly suicidal, and said some had made clear after reaching Guantanamo that they still "want to hurt and kill Americans."
The ICRC will keep its findings confidential but will report its findings to U.S. authorities.
A team of British officials also arrived at the prison camp late on Thursday to visit three detainees who claim British citizenship.
Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said the delegation would "help the process of identification, report on the welfare of the British detainees and help U.S. authorities with their legal inquiries."
Neither U.S. nor British officials have released the names of the British prisoners or said where they came from. The Australian government also has confirmed that an Australian is among the prisoners.
Blair, Washington's staunchest ally in its Afghan campaign, has dismissed all criticism of the handling of the prisoners.
"The United States… has repeatedly said that they will treat these prisoners humanely," Blair's spokesman said.
Meanwhile, in Washington a senior official said the U.S. military planned to quickly move six Algerians who had been detained in Bosnia since last October to the Guantanamo base.
The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo said earlier that Bosnian authorities had handed over to U.S. custody the six, who were detained on suspicion of involvement in terrorism.
Musharraf says bin Laden may well be dead
Saturday January 19, 4:06 PM
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - They hunt him here, they hunt him there, but Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf believes there is no need to hunt Osama bin Laden in the rugged lawless tribal fiefdoms on his border with Afghanistan because he may be dead.
The campaign in Afghanistan could not be declared 100 percent successful with bin Laden and his ally, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, both still at large, he told CNN.
The Saudi-born fugitive, his trail cold, could well be dead or have fled Afghanistan, Musharraf said in an interview with the Lebanese-based Middle East Broadcasting Centre reprinted in part on Friday in the local newspaper The News.
Musharraf outlined several possible scenarios to account for the disappearance of the tall, thin, bearded militant accused of masterminding the suicide plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
He favoured the theory that bin Laden was dead, he told CNN in an interview broadcast on Friday.
"The photographs... show him extremely weak," Musharraf told CNN. "I would give the first priority that he is dead and the second priority that he is alive somewhere in Afghanistan."
Bin Laden's kidney problems may have cost him his life, the Pakistani president said.
"He is a kidney patient and I know that he has donated two dialysis machines to Afghanistan and one was specifically for his own personal use," he told CNN. "I really don't know whether he has been getting all that treatment in Afghanistan now."
In his latest video, broadcast last month, bin Laden appeared frail and pale and barely moved his left side.
U.S. heavy bombers have pounded the mountain cave complexes said to have housed bin Laden's al Qaeda network, but the trail leading to the world's most wanted man has gone cold.
Musharraf said he thought it unlikely that the grey-bearded fugitive could be hiding in a populated area while there is a $25 million bounty on his head.
"He may have been killed because of the heavy bombing or he has died of a kidney problem as he was not getting his dialysis machine in the caves," Musharraf told Middle East Broadcasting Centre.
"He might be hiding in the mountains," Musharraf said. "If he was in the city, someone might have disclosed his whereabouts.
"The third possibility is that he might have gone out of Afghanistan to some unknown place," Musharraf added.
The United States has said it has no idea where bin Laden is, but has said he is still thought to be hiding out among the remote steep-sided mountains and narrow valleys of Afghanistan where he moved in 1996 to establish training camps for his al Qaeda fighters.
Musharraf did not rule out that bin Laden might have slipped into Pakistan.
A RARE CHANCE
"But the chances are rare," he told the Lebanese broadcaster.
"We have sealed the borders with Afghanistan. We are interacting with the tribal leaders to block his entry and these areas are thickly populated so someone may disclose his whereabouts," he said.
In an unprecedented deployment, the military ruler has won permission from chieftains in the lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan to send the army to watch the porous border where his government writ does not reach in line with a British colonial era edict.
Musharraf said he believed the reclusive Mullah Omar was still in hiding in Afghanistan and had not fled abroad.
U.S. troops and Afghan tribal forces searched for the vanquished leader in remote mountain regions near his southern stronghold, Kandahar, but appeared to come away with little more than reports he had fled on a motorcycle with a few companions.
Without the capture of the two most wanted men, it was hard to declare total victory, Musharraf told CNN.
"The two leaders have not been found, so to that extent I wouldn't give 100 percent success," he said.
A former friend of bin Laden said on Thursday he believed the fugitive was probably dead and his recent video broadcast looked like the farewell message of a doomed man.
"I 99 percent believe he's been killed in the caves of Afghanistan by the very hard bombing," Essam Darez, an Egyptian freelance writer who spent time with bin Laden in Afghanistan between 1986 and 1990, told Reuters in an interview.
"He looked like a sick man who felt he was going to die and that he must deliver this message before he did," Darez said of bin Laden, once one of the mujahideen guerrillas who waged a bloody war against Soviet forces in the 1980s.
Afghan aid may all but hit near-term target: co-chair
Saturday January 19, 3:23 PM AFP
An international meeting here should come close to meeting its target of raising five billion dollars for Afghanistan for the next 30 months but longer term commitments are needed, its co-chair said Saturday.
"I hope it will come infinitely close to the target," Sadako Ogata told a news conference ahead of the two-day meeting on the reconstruction of Afghanistan which opens here on Monday.
"I am hopeful that desirable figures will be presented."
The former UN high commissioner for refugees is due to preside over the meeting, which will bring together delegates from 54 countries and 18 international agencies.
The World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the Asian Development Bank have estimated that rebuilding Afghanistan will require 1.7 billion dollars in the coming year and 4.9 billion dollars over 30 months.
Their assessment, which will provide a basis for talks at the Tokyo meeting, also says 14.6 billion dollars will be necessary for 10 years. Afghan officials say three times that amount will be needed.
Ogata, who returned last Wednesday from a 10-day tour of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran as Japan's special envoy for Afghan assistance, noted that different countries were making proposals for different lengths of time.
"There is no need to be disappointed if the amount does not exactly reach the five billion dollars," she said. "This meeting is just the first step. What we need is long-term assistance."
In Kabul, she met Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai, who will attend the Tokyo meeting along with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Ogata also pointed to the need for an international mechanism on the spot in Afghanistan to coordinate the distribution of aid "on a local basis."
She hoped that the Tokyo meeting would shift the emphasis from "humanitarian aid to reconstruction aid."
She said that the aid should help push the peace process, establish a stable administration, bring back refugees, remove landmines, build mass-media infrastructure and promote education, particularly of women.
The Afghan meeting, jointly chaired by the European Union (EU), Japan, Saudi Arabia and the United States, will take into account a report from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) due to hold their own discussions on Sunday.
Tokyo is considering offering 400-to-500 million dollars over the next 30 months, a record Japanese pledge for a war-hit country, according to Japanese press reports.
On Friday Japan said it would provide nearly 60 million dollars in assistance to Afghan refugees in addition to 42.7 million dollars already contributed.
The EU is ready to provide a quarter of the funds needed for mid-term reconstruction programmes, EU external affairs commissioner Chris Patten told the Japanese newspaper Asahi.
Washington has yet to unveil its contribution, but Colin Powell said after meeting Karzai in Kabul Thursday that the US would offer a "significant" sum.
Ogata said aid should be used first of all for the return home of some five million Afghan refugees, a fifth of the country's population -- four million in Pakistan and Iran and one million within their own country.
But she added that Japan could also offer its help in areas such as the development of Afghanistan's media, which was suppressed by the now desposed fundamentalist Taliban regime for five years
January 19, 2:20 PM BBC News
A Muslim society in Singapore has alleged that the government has not taken the sensitivities of the Muslim community into consideration when supporting American attacks in Afghanistan.
In an interview with BBC World Service aired on Friday, Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff from the Fateha group claims the Muslim community in Singapore sees these as attacks on Muslims.
The Singapore government, in supporting the US action, shows it does not regard the Muslim community's views highly, he alleges.
He says as a result, there is tension among the community.
Mr Zulfikar has also criticised Singapore's Muslim leaders.
He alleges that every time something happens in which the community can be portrayed negatively by the government, Muslim leaders in government will condemn the development without seeking to open the issue for debate.
By Linda Sieg
TOKYO (Reuters) - Donor countries are set to pledge billions of dollars to rebuild Afghanistan at a conference next week where Kabul's leaders will present their vision of how to create a viable economy after decades of devastation.
Officials from over 60 governments and international organisations will meet in Tokyo on Monday and Tuesday to pledge funds for a reconstruction process that aid experts estimate will take $15 billion over a decade, much of it in the initial stage.
The success of the endeavour to remake what was already one of the world's poorest countries before two decades of war and drought will take far more patience than the U.S.-led military campaign which toppled the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban.
But it is vital to ensure Afghanistan never again becomes a breeding ground for radical movements such as the Taliban and Saudi-born millionaire Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Afghanistan's interim president Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun tribal chief who has lived in the United States, makes his global debut at the conference after a trip to Saudi Arabia.
Donors will be seeking assurances from Karzai that he has a plan to wean the economy from drug trade dependence and promote equality for women, harshly oppressed under the Taliban regime.
Karzai, for his part, will want promises that the global community will not forget his country's plight as other international hot spots compete for their attention.
The four conference co-hosts -- Japan, the United States, the European Union and Saudi Arabia -- are expected to broadly share the bulk of the financial burden for rebuilding Afghanistan.
Japanese government sources said Tokyo was likely to pledge as much as $500 million over the next 2-1/2 years, of which media said half would be provided in the first year.
European Union officials have said they hoped to pump at least $500 million a year into the reconstruction effort, or about one-quarter of the $9-12 billion they see needed over the first five years.
WISH LIST, VISION
A draft statement to be issued at the end of the meeting says the interim government has five reconstruction priorities -- paying government salaries and creating a functioning bureaucracy; education; health and sanitation; infrastructure; and reconstruction of the economy, including the currency system.
Afghanistan itself must take the lead in the costly and lengthy process, the draft, obtained by Reuters, says.
"The Afghan government and its people are the owner of their future, and will be in the driving seat," it says.
The new Afghan leaders said in Kabul that their priority was to bring home the six million Afghans living as refugees or exiles settled abroad or people displaced within the country due to 23 years of strife and drought.
Longer term, their vision is to develop Afghanistan's natural resources to create a viable economy.
"We also have to provide urban services, transport and de-mining and fight the drugs trade," Deputy Planning Minister Abdul Salam told Reuters in Kabul on Friday.
"So we are trying to rehabilitate Afghanistan as a whole, in all sectors, and to make it self-sufficient."
WAYS AND MEANS
Big donors were finalising their pledges and Japanese media said on Saturday that they were likely to pledge a total of $3 billion for the first 30 months at the conference.
Disagreements, however, exist over how to channel the aid.
The World Bank among others favours setting up a trust fund to avoid conflicting projects and chaotic distribution of money n a country that is still split into local fiefdoms despite the creation of a central government in Kabul.
But many big donors, seeking to reap political credit for the aid, want to give the money directly to specific projects.
"Not just Japan, but every country, wants to give visible aid," Japan's Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs Kenshiro Matsunami told Reuters this week.
Diplomats said that the big donors were likely to get their way in the end, although the World Bank would set up a fund to administer contributions from smaller states
Afghan leader heads to donors' meeting after Saudi talks
Sunday January 20, 12:57 AM
RIYADH (Reuters) - Interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, on a world tour to drum up international aid, left Saudi Arabia for Tokyo on Saturday with a commitment that the oil-rich kingdom would seek to improve strained ties with his government, government sources said.
But there was no immediate indication of the amount of aid Saudi Arabia would provide for the rebuilding of Afghanistan or whether the Saudis had agreed to reopen the Afghan embassy in the capital Riyadh.
Saudi sources said Karzai, on the first leg of a tour which will also take him to a world donors' conference in Japan, held a 90-minute meeting with Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler. He had earlier paid a courtesy call on ailing King Fahd.
One source, who declined to be identified, said Karzai and Prince Abdullah discussed the financial needs of Afghanistan's interim government and the strained ties between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, a former ally of the ousted militant Taliban.
"Both sides agreed on the need for further talks on the state of relations between the two countries," the source said, adding that the Saudi government provided Karzai with a private aircraft to fly him and his delegation to Tokyo.
However, the leaders reaffirmed "the strength of the historical and religious ties between the two nations", the source told Reuters.
Saudi Arabia will co-chair a donors' meeting in Tokyo on Monday and Tuesday at which Afghanistan hopes to obtain funding for a reconstruction programme that will cost an estimated $10.2 billion over five years.
Saudi diplomats have said ties with the interim Afghan government were strained over reports of killings and maltreatment of Saudi nationals suspected of being al Qaeda members who were captured by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
The kingdom says it wants custody of any of its nationals captured in Afghanistan and will punish those with links to Osama bin Laden, who was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 for activities against the royal family.
Saudi Arabia has been a key player in Afghanistan's 23 years of war, first backing Islamic rebels battling Soviet occupation forces in the 1980s and then supporting the Taliban from 1996.
The Saudi government froze diplomatic ties with the Taliban in 1998 to protest at the presence of bin Laden in Afghanistan, and severed relations completely two weeks after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries that recognised the government of the hardline Islamist Taliban.
Karzai, on his first foreign trip since taking office last month, on Friday began his quest to rebuild Afghanistan with a pilgrimage to Islam's holiest shrine in Mecca in what diplomats said was a sign of good faith to improve ties.
Seven al-Qaeda members captured in Kabul: Afghan television
Sunday January 20, 12:52 AM AFP
Seven members of the al-Qaeda network of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden have been captured in Kabul, Afghan television announced.
The report Saturday, quoting the Bakhtar private news agency, said the seven were captured by security forces Friday night in District 11, in the north of the capital.
"The security forces of District 11 captured seven al-Qaeda members," the report said, without giving further details.
It showed footage of the seven, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, some wearing skullcaps. Their features were Afghan.
The arrests, which came on the day interim leader Hamid Karzai headed for a visit to Saudi Arabia, mark the first time al-Qaeda members have been captured in Kabul.
On Wednesday, a defense official in Washington said US forces had captured seven suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan in an operation kept secret to prevent spooking others who might be in the same area.
The defense official, who asked not to be identified, said the seven were taken by surprise by US forces who captured them at an undisclosed location without firing a shot.
The location and other details of the operation were being withheld to keep from alerting al-Qaeda fighters in the area that their presence had been detected, the official said.
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