Afghanistan News January 2, 2002

January 2, 2002

U.S. scours for clues in pursuit of Taliban leader
By Jonathan Lyons and Jeremy Page
Thursday January 3, 5:35 AMWASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - With its air campaign over Afghanistan winding down, the United States on Wednesday pursued its war on terrorism through the courts and reminded its Afghan allies it expected them to hand over deposed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in the event of his capture.

In the Afghan capital, meanwhile, deployment of the multinational peacekeeping force began to take shape.

But the trail of Osama bin Laden, identified by Washington as the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks on America that killed nearly 3,300, appears to have gone cold in the mountainous expanse that divides Afghanistan from Pakistan.

U.S. President George W. Bush, recalling the pioneer spirit of his Texas heritage, has pledged repeatedly to capture bin Laden, a Saudi-born Islamic militant and the world's most wanted man, "dead or alive."

But for now, at least, Washington's attention was focused elsewhere.

In a court in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon that was badly damaged in the September 11 suicide missions, Zacarias Moussaoui appeared to face the first charges filed in direct connection with the deadly attacks. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Dressed in a green jumpsuit with the word "Prisoner" on the back, Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent, stood briefly to address the court during his arraignment.

MOUSSAOUI DEMURS

"In the name of Allah I do not have anything to plead. I enter no plea. Thank you very much," a bearded Moussaoui said in accented English.

Moussaoui was charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, to commit aircraft piracy, to destroy aircraft, to use weapons of mass destruction, to murder U.S. government employees and to destroy property.

His lawyers entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf, and the judge ordered jury selection to begin on September 30.

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Washington was confident Mullah Omar would be handed over by Afghanistan's interim government if he were taken.

She spoke as negotiations continued between Afghan officials and trapped Taliban fighters northwest of the city of Kandahar where the reclusive cleric was believed to be hiding.

Clarke also said several hundred members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division had arrived at a military airfield in Kandahar over the past several days to begin replacing more than 1,000 Marines there.

"It's been made very clear that we expect to have control of him (Mullah Omar)," said Clarke. "We've made it very, very clear consistently what we expect the disposition of these people should be, particularly the leadership," she said.

"So far, the cooperation has been quite good."

A force of 200 Marines continued to search an area north of Kandahar for any intelligence that would help pinpoint bin Laden's al Qaeda network and any remaining Taliban forces.

There were also reports that U.S. Army Special Operations troops had joined the hunt for bin Laden and Mullah Omar. However, the Pentagon's Clarke refused to comment on those reports.

SURRENDER TALKS

Officials in Kandahar, spiritual home of the austere Taliban movement, said negotiations were under way to try to capture its fugitive leader without bloodshed.

"We are still in contact with the people there to find a way to end this issue peacefully," said an official working for intelligence chief Haji Gullalai.

As post-war Afghanistan faced the struggle to rebuild, a team from 12 nations contributing to a foreign security force in Kabul began surveying the shattered Afghan capital.

The 25-strong team from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Romania met British troops at the force's headquarters in a dilapidated former sports club in the centre of the city.

"Today marks the arrival of the multinational recce party from all the troop-contributing nations that intend to place forces into the International Security Assistance Force," said British Colonel Richard Barrons.

U.S. Central Command has directed a massive air onslaught against the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network since October 7, but many Afghans want the bombing -- blamed for hundreds if not thousands of civilian deaths -- to stop.

Impoverished by more than 20 years of warfare, foreign invasion, anarchy and Taliban misrule, Afghanistan's New Year began on a bitter note, with charges that U.S. bombs had killed 107 civilians at a village near the town of Gardez over the weekend.

The U.S. military rejected the accusation from local Afghans, saying its planes had destroyed a compound used by al Qaeda and the Taliban.

A U.S. intelligence official said the military believed its bombs had killed Taliban intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah during the last week of December. "We think he's most likely dead," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Earlier, the New York Times newspaper quoted Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai as saying he was worried about the mounting civilian casualties.

"We want to finish terrorists in Afghanistan -- we want to finish them completely ... But we must also make sure our civilians do not suffer," he told the paper.

A SHOWBIZ COMEBACK

A U.N. spokeswoman said thousands of Afghans were trying to enter Pakistan, with nearly 5,000 arriving at the border town of Chaman and thousands more reported to be fleeing Kandahar.

"This is the first time in several weeks that we are seeing such a large number of arrivals from Afghanistan," said Fatoumata Kaba, adding that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees did not know why so many were trying to leave.

Finance Minister Hedayat Amin Arsala told Reuters he wanted the volatile Afghan currency stabilised, but without interfering in the markets and without creating inflation in one of the world's most devastated economies.

He estimated Afghanistan needed at least $12 billion in foreign aid over the next five years.

In a rare glimmer of hope for an Afghan renewal, a troupe of actors staged the first play in Kabul since the reign of the Taliban, who had barred such entertainment -- along with kite-flying and music -- in line with their dour reading of Islam.

Using a bombed-out shell of a building as their setting, four actors staged a simple show for an audience of 100, including Minister of Culture Raheen Makhdoom and Minister for Women's Issues Sima Samar.

"They burned my theatre, they burned my art, they burned my house," lamented actor Najibullah, 39. "I used to have plenty of spectators, who gave me generous applause and gifts. Now my spectators are nothing but coal dust."

Taliban intelligence chief killed in US bombing: Afghan officials
Wednesday January 2, 10:48 PM AFP

The intelligence chief of Afghanistan's former Taliban regime, Qari Ahmadullah, was killed along with up to 50 of his men in a US bombing raid, an Afghan government official said.

Intelligence officials in Afghanistan's new interim government said Ahmadullah died during a US bombing raid on Katawaz district in Ghazni province on Monday.

"Qari Ahmadullah was killed along with between 40 to 50 men in their headquarters in Katawaz district when American planes bombed the building," said Azimullah (Eds: one name), an intelligence officer based in Kabul.

"We have received this information from our own sources, rather than through American channels," he told AFP.

Ahmadullah was the Taliban's first interior minister after Kabul fell to the Islamic militia's forces in 1996.

He was also responsible for bribing anti-Taliban commanders to desert the ranks of the Northern Alliance opposition.

Ahmadullah also commanded troops fighting on frontlines in the north of the country against the Northern Alliance.

The Taliban crumbled in the wake of a US-led bombing campaign launched on October 7 in retaliation for the regime's refusal to hand over Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Waves of international peacekeepers arrive in Afghanistan

Wednesday January 2, 10:34 PM AFP

The deployment of the international peacekeeping force for Afghanistan began in earnest with the arrival of the first French troops and an advance party of officers from 12 nations.

The 24 officers arrived before dawn at Kabul airport and were taken to the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the centre of Kabul, ISAF chief of staff Colonel Richard Barrons said.

A contingent of 15 French soldiers arrived later at Bagram air base north of Kabul. The personnel, mainly engineers, will prepare the way for the main French deployment to the force, said Colonel Denis Reumaux.

Barrons said the 24 officers are all reconnaissance experts who will survey the five sites identified as bases for the 4,500-strong UN-mandated multinational force.

The officers -- nine from Germany, one from Holland, one from Denmark, one from Austria, two from France, two from Greece, two from Italy, one from Norway, one from Romania, two from Spain, one from Finland and one from Sweden -- will also assess the needs of their own troop deployments.

ISAF's main task, he said, was to provide support and security to the interim administration sworn in for a six-month period on December 22.

Britain will lead the force for the first three months of its six-month deployment and will contribute up to 1,500 soldiers. An advance guard of about 270 British troops is already operating in Kabul.

French Defense Minister Alain Richard said Wednesday that Turkey will assume the ISAF command when Britain's leadership term expires. Turkey is the only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Turkish troops would be among the first soldiers to be deployed in Afghanistan, alongside the British, French and German contingents, he said in Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

Underlining the risk the international troops face, a vehicle carrying US special operations forces came under fire Tuesday while travelling along the perilous highway between Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad.

A US military spokesman said a soldier was shot in the leg but his condition was not serious. The unidentified assailants fled the scene, which was near the spot where four journalists were killed by bandits in November.

Afghan authorities said Tuesday they were planning a massive operation with the help of US Marines to flush out Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar from his hiding place in southern Afghanistan.

Gulalai said the "clean-up" operation would involve 4,000 to 5,000 Afghan soldiers backed by US Marines.

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) also reported Wednesday that the Taliban regime's intelligence chief Qari Ahmedullah was killed in last week's US bombing raids on eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province.

In a sign that instability may be returning to southern Afghanistan, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Wednesday that up to 5,000 Afghans were massed at the Pakistan border.

Afghans hope words not bombs will bring out Omar By Sayed Salahuddin

Wednesday January 2, 7:39 PM

KABUL (Reuters) - Anti-Taliban forces said on Wednesday negotiations were under way in southern Afghanistan to try to capture cleric Mullah Mohammad Omar without bloodshed.

"We are still in contact with the people there to find a way to end this issue peacefully." said an official working for intelligence chief Haji Gullalai in Kandahar, the southern city that was once a bastion of Omar's Taliban movement.

"I think we can achieve this goal through dialogue and discussion," he told Reuters.

Gullalai is hunting the reclusive, one-eyed supreme ruler of the vanquished Taliban. Mullah Omar is second only to Osama bin Laden on the United States' most wanted list.

Since 1996, Omar provided a home to the Saudi-born millionaire accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people.

Omar is believed to have taken refuge with 1,500 fighters near the town of Baghran in southern Helmand, a district 160 km (100 miles) northwest of Kandahar.

About 200 U.S. Marines have also been scouring a suspected hideout in southern Afghanistan, but the Marines, who rumbled out of Kandahar in a pre-dawn convoy on Tuesday were not taking a direct part in the hunt for Omar, U.S. Central Command said.

Instead, they were searching a fenced compound of about 14 structures in an unspecified part of Helmand suspected of having been occupied at times by bin Laden's foreign volunteers and their Taliban allies, said a Central Command spokesman, U.S. Navy commander Dan Keesee.

"The people who are actually knocking on the doors of these structures are anti-Taliban (Afghan) forces," Keesee said, "and they are backed up by the U.S. Marines."

AFGHANS WANT BOMBING TO STOP

Central Command has directed a massive U.S. air onslaught on Omar's Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network since October 7, but many Afghans want the bombing -- blamed for hundreds if not thousands of civilian deaths -- to stop.

"There is no fighting now and the local people also don't want destruction and death," the Kandahar official said.

Impoverished by more than 20 years of warfare, foreign invasion, anarchy and Taliban misrule, Afghanistan's New Year began on a bitter note, with charges that U.S. bombs had killed 107 civilians at a village near the town of Gardez on Sunday.

Witnesses found pools of blood, scraps of flesh and clumps of human hair among the destroyed houses, and local representatives urged an end to U.S. air strikes.

The U.S. military rejected the accusation, saying its planes had destroyed a compound used by al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The New York Times newspaper quoted Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Wednesday as saying he was worried about the mounting civilian casualties.

"We want to finish terrorists in Afghanistan -- we want to finish them completely...But we must also make sure our civilians do not suffer," he told the paper.

Karzai said he was planning to discuss the bombing of the village with elders from the affected part of the country, and had sent a helicopter to bring them to Kabul.

He also planned to discuss the issue of civilian deaths with U.S. officials this week, the paper reported.

POPE CONDEMNS VIOLENCE

In the Vatican City, Pope John Paul said the September 11 attacks had shaken the world, and condemned the use of violence in the name of God.

"No one, for any reason, can kill in the name of God," he told the packed congregation in an impassioned address marking the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of peace.

In Jakarta, Amien Rais, one of Indonesia's most influential Muslim leaders, said there was no evidence that al Qaeda had operated in the country, and he insisted the vast majority of Indonesians opposed radical Islam.

In Alexandria, Virginia, Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person indicted in the September 11 attacks, is due to appear before a federal court to enter a plea on charges of conspiring with bin Laden to murder thousands of people.

The 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent is charged with six counts of conspiracy, four of which carry a possible death penalty.

Overnight in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, Indian and Pakistani troops traded mortar and machinegun fire across the frontier, just days before the nuclear rivals' leaders are due to attend a regional summit in Nepal.

The threat of a fourth India-Pakistan war destabilising the region and undermining the U.S. campaign against the remnants of al Qaeda and the Taliban has unnerved world powers.

U.S. President George W. Bush has phoned both Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf urging talks as well as firm Pakistani action against Islamic militants

Karzai backs US bombings, wants peacekeepers all over Afghanistan
Wednesday January 2, 5:26 PM AFP

Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai backed US bombings of terrorist targets in his country, but expressed concern about mounting civilian casualties, in an interview published in The New York Times.

"We want to finish terrorists in Afghanistan; we want to finish them completely," Karzai said. "But we must also make sure our civilians do not suffer."

He also told the daily Tuesday in his office at Gulkhanna Palace in Kabul that he wanted to see multinational peacekeepers in other cities besides Kabul, adding that Afghans from all over the country had asked him to send peacekeepers.

Karzai, who took office December 22 after the Taliban regime was toppled by US-backed opposition forces, acknowledged a problem of lawlessness in Afghanistan and said he was appointing provincial governors to deal with local security.

He said he was investigating the incident in which some 70 civilians were killed during a US raid on a suspected terrorist arms dump in Paktia province on Saturday, which the Pentagon partly blamed on members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist al-Qaeda network for hiding among the local population.

He told the paper that he had sent a helicopter to ferry elders from Paktia to Kabul and that another group of tribal leaders had driven to the capital to help in the investigation.

Karzai said he also planned to raise the issue of civilian deaths with US officials this week.

Asked when civilian casualties would become unbearable in the war on terrorism, he said, "We must make sure there is no civilian cost at all."

An aide to Karzai suggested rival groups in the area of the bombing may have deliberately fed faulty information to US officials to help them in their power struggle.

"People are using this to settle old scores. This is politically motivated," said the aide whose identity was not given.

Despite the civilian toll, Karzai said he was "glad the United States has joined in" to fight terrorism, adding that he had ordered the arrest of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and welcomed US involvement in the mission.

Karzai said that lower-level Taliban fighters, whom he termed as "common people," would be let out of prison and allowed to go home.

But "The bad guys will stay," he added, referring to the Taliban leadership and foreigners who fought on the Taliban's side.

The president said restoring economic order to Afghanistan was a top priority, "as important as security." He said he was moving quickly to set up a customs system and other mechanisms to generate revenue, select a head of the central bank and work out a new currency policy.

Karzai refused to give an explanation for the continued presence of Afghan troops in Kabul barracks, implying a change in the Bonn agreement which called for all Afghan armed units to leave the city. All he would say was: "There is a new agreement."

According to Western military sources, the Afghans insisted that in the Dari language the agreement called for troops to be removed from the "streets of Kabul."

On a separate issue, Karzai suggested that disarmament in Afghanistan would not be as comprehensive as some believe.

"There are good and bad people," he said. "The bad guys should be disarmed by whatever means."

Foreign officers arrive in Afghanistan as search for Omar intensifies
Wednesday January 2, 5:20 PM AFP

A final push was imminent to flush Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar out of his latest hideout, as military officers from 17 countries paved the way here for a 4,500-strong security force to shore up Afghanistan's fledgling government.

US Marines conducting an intelligence gathering mission at a suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda compound in southern Helmand province, where Omar is thought to be hiding, returned to their base in Kandahar early Wednesday, CNN reported.

The advance party of some 20 to 30 officers and other personnel preparing for the arrival of the multinational peacekeepers arrived here early Wednesday, British officials said.

In Berlin, a German defense ministry spokesman said a group of 149 people from the countries contributing troops for the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had left Britain for the Afghan capital.

Seventy British troops arrived in Kabul on Monday after an agreement was finally signed setting up the international force to help provide security, as the new government of interim leader Hamid Karzai tries to rebuild the central Asian nation following the ouster of the hardline Taliban militia.

Britain will lead the force for the first three months of its six-month deployment in Afghanistan, and its troops will be joined by a large German contingent and forces from other contributor nations.

French Defense Minister Alain Richard said in Islamabad Wednesday that Turkey would assume command of the force when Britain's term expires.

Turkish troops would be among the first soldiers to be deployed alongside the British, French and German contingents, he told a meeting of the French community in the Pakistani capital.

Turkey is the only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

The first French soldiers in the international peacekeeping force arrived Wednesday at Bagram air base north of the capital Kabul, a French military source said.

The contingent, which will be based in Kabul, comprised mainly engineers who have come to prepare the way for the main deployment, the French official said.

In an interview published Wednesday in the US daily The New York Times, Karzai welcomed the presence of peacekeepers in Kabul, but said he wanted them in other cities as well, adding that people from all over had asked him for peacekeepers.

US and Afghan forces prepared a massive push to capture Omar at his latest hideout in the south of the country, Afghan officials said.

Omar, on the run since the fall of Kandahar on December 7, has reportedly established a new base in Baghran in the remote mountains to the northwest of Kandahar, where he is guarded by supporters and al-Qaeda loyalists.

The US military has declined to confirm US media reports that some 200 US Marines have already joined the hunt for Omar, but local Afghan intelligence chief Haju Gulalai said a major operation involving marines was in the offing.

Since the collapse of the Taliban regime, both alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, who has been blamed for the September 11 attacks on US cities, and Omar have fled their former Afghan strongholds and gone into hiding.

A US military spokesman confirmed that US marines and Afghan forces were conducting an intelligence gathering operation in Helmand province, where Baghran is located.

"There has been no opposition, no shots fired, no injuries reported," said Commander Frank Merriman, speaking at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, denying that the operation was a "specific search for Omar."

CNN showed images of the marines returning to the Kandahar base before dawn on Wednesday, having completed the fact-finding mission.

However, Gulalai, chief of intelligence in Kandahar province, said a raid against Omar's suspected base was planned, and would take place unless negotiations to avert bloodshed succeeded.

Gulalai said local military commanders in Helmand province were sheltering Omar and a "clean-up" operation against them involving 4,000 to 5,000 Afghan soldiers backed by marines had originally been due to start early Tuesday.

However, tribal leaders urged a postponement to allow negotiations to be held over Omar's future as well as the surrender of weapons.

Meanwhile, more than two months after US President George W. Bush launched his war on terrorism, a powerful Iranian conservative party leader, Habibollah Asgaroladi, said Washington had picked Iraq as the next target and was preparing an "all-out attack."

"According to the reports we have received, the Americans are preparing themselves for launching an all-out attack on Iraq," Asgaroladi was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA in Tehran.

Asgaroladi is the leader of the Islamic Coalition Society, the oldest and most influential conservative party in Iran.

"Of course, if the Americans launch such an attack, they will have to incur huge costs. However, apparently American strategists believe that it is inevitable," he said.

Iraq has been at the top of the list in speculation about where the war on terrorism would turn after Afghanistan, but US officials have declined to confirm plans for new attacks.

Afghan peacekeeping advance party arrives in Kabul
Wednesday January 2, 4:10 PM AFP

Senior officers from 17 countries contributing to the peacekeeping mission for Afghanistan arrived in Kabul to prepare the way for the 4,500-strong contingent, a British official said.

Some 20 to 30 officers landed at Kabul International Airport around 3.15 am (2145 GMT), British embassy spokesman Paul Sykes told AFP.

An earlier German Defence Ministry statement that the total strength of the multinational advance party would be 149 military personnel, including administrative and other support staff, was incorrect, he said.

"Only 20 to 30 officers arrived this morning," Sykes said. "No one else."

The advance party is preparing for the arrival of the bulk of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which will initially operate under the command of Britain's Major General John McColl.

Britain will lead ISAF for the first three months of its six-month deployment and will contribute up to 1,500 soldiers. Germany's initial contribution will be 770 troops.

An advance guard of about 270 British troops is already operating in Kabul, patrolling the capital and providing visible support to the new interim administration sworn in last month.

French Defense Minister Alain Richard said Wednesday that Turkey will assume the ISAF command when Britain's leadership term expires.

Turkish troops would be among the first soldiers to be deployed in Afghanistan, alongside the British, French and German contingents, he told a meeting of the French community in Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

"In order to be able to lead the second phase, they must be present during this first phase," he said.

Turkey is the only Muslim member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Richard did not indicate when the Turkish soldiers were arriving, but said the first French troops, a group of "a few dozen" were expected in Kabul later Wednesday. A total of 500 will be deployed within the next few weeks.

"We wanted to take part in this force for obvious political reasons," Richard said, describing it as an opportunity to participate in the political reconstruction of Afghanistan.

"It is a three month engagement, and after that we hope that the need for this force will lessen."

Underlining the risk the international troops face, a vehicle carrying US special operations forces came under fire Tuesday while travelling along the perilous highway between Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad.

A US military spokesman said a soldier was shot in the leg but his condition was not serious. The unidentified assailants fled the scene, which was near the spot where four journalists were killed by bandits in November.

The United States is holding 210 detainees belonging to the defunct Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network in Afghan camps and on a US naval ship in the Arabian Sea, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday.

The majority of them, 189, are being held at a detention center in the southern city of Kandahar, Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Rivers Johnson told AFP.

Afghan authorities said Tuesday they were planning a massive operation with the help of US Marines to flush out Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar from his hiding place in southern Afghanistan.

Haji Gulalai, chief of intelligence in Kandahar province, said Omar's fate was being negotiated with his supporters, but if the talks failed the raid would be launched in three or four days.

Gulalai said the "clean-up" operation involving 4,000 to 5,000 Afghan soldiers backed by US Marines was originally due to start Tuesday but tribal leaders urged a postponement to allow negotiations over Omar's fate.

A US military spokesman confirmed that US Marines and Afghan forces are conducting an intelligence gathering operation at a suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan's Helmand province.

However, he said the mission was not a specific search for Omar.

Senior officers to prepare arrival of peacekeepers, search for Omar intensifies
Wednesday January 2, 11:11 AM AFP

Senior officers from 17 countries were due in Kabul to prepare for the arrival of a 4,500-strong security force to shore up Afghanistan's fledgling power-sharing government.

Meanwhile, US and Afghan forces readied a final push to find Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of the Taliban regime that was forced from power and replaced on December 22 by the historic administration bringing together rival factions.

A British military spokesman told AFP late Tuesday that the advance party of some 20 to 30 officers and other personnel would arrive at Kabul's international airport early Wednesday.

In Berlin, a German defense ministry spokesman said a group of 149 people from the countries contributing troops for the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had left Britain for the Afghan capital.

Seventy British troops arrived in Kabul on Monday after an agreement was finally signed setting up the international force to help provide security as the new government of interim leader Hamid Karzai tries to rebuild the central Asian nation after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban militia.

Britain will lead the force for the first three months of its six-month deployment in Afghanistan, and its troops will be joined by a large German contingent and forces from other contributor nations.

Since the collapse of the Taliban regime, both suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, who has been blamed for the September 11 attacks on US cities, and Omar have fled their former Afghan strongholds and gone into hiding.

A US military spokesman confirmed that US marines and Afghan forces were conducting an intelligence gathering operation at a suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan's Helmand province, where Baghran is located.

"There has been no opposition, no shots fired, no injuries reported," said Commander Frank Merriman, speaking at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, denying the operation was a "specific search for Omar."

However, Gulalai, chief of intelligence in Kandahar province, said a raid against Omar's suspected base was planned, and would take place unless negotiations to avert bloodshed succeeded.

Gulalai said local military commanders in Helmand province were sheltering Omar and a "clean-up" operation against them involving 4,000 to 5,000 Afghan soldiers backed by US Marines was originally due to start early Tuesday.

However, tribal leaders urged a postponement to allow negotiations to be held over Omar's future as well as the surrender of weapons.

Meanwhile, more than two months after US President George W. Bush launched his war on terrorism, a powerful Iranian conservative party leader, Habibollah Asgaroladi, said Washington had picked Iraq as the next target and was preparing an "all-out attack."

"According to the reports we have received, the Americans are preparing themselves for launching an all-out attack on Iraq," Asgaroladi was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA in Tehran.

Asgaroladi is the leader of the Islamic Coalition Society, the oldest and most influential Iranian conservative party.

"Of course, if the Americans launch such an attack, they will have to incur huge costs. However, apparently American strategists believe that it is inevitable," he said.

Iraq has been at the top of the list in speculation about where the war on terrorism would turn after Afghanistan, but US officials have declined to confirm plans for new attacks.

Meanwhile, the new Afghan administration came to the defense of US forces accused of killing civilians in air strikes.

On Monday, villagers in Paktia province said at least 70 civilians were killed in a US air raid on a suspected arms dump.

The Pentagon blamed bin Laden's al-Qaeda network for any civilian deaths, claiming that members of the hardline Islamic group were hiding among the local population.

That view was backed by Afghanistan's new Border Affairs Minister, Amanullah Zadran, who said bombing was the only way to destroy a large cache of weapons stored in a house guarded by Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathisers in the village of Nizai Qala.

"There was no intention to kill innocent people," he said.

Elsewhere, about 150 of bin Laden's al-Qaeda followers were to be taken from Pakistani custody to a US base in Afghanistan to face interrogation about the fate of the Saudi-born radical, Islamabad's Dawn daily said.

The newspaper said the detained al-Qaeda men -- mostly from Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other unspecified Arabian peninsula countries -- would be flown to Kandahar in batches.

US forces built a prison camp at Kandahar airport after Marines moved in to occupy the facility last month.

US network ABC News, quoting unnamed military officials, reported that US armed forces had "circumstantial but compelling" evidence that bin Laden was alive and still in charge of his followers.

The report quoted one of the officials as saying the United States had intercepted al-Qaeda communications originating in Iran.

A US military spokesman said Monday that Washington was holding 180 prisoners from al-Qaeda or the former ruling Taliban militia which had sheltered bin Laden -- 164 are being held in Kandahar.

US officials also confirmed that one US soldier was wounded in the leg when a vehicle carrying US troops came under fire near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. The wound was not life-threatening, officials said

Terrorist suspect expected to plead innocent
01/02/2002 - Updated 07:22 AM ET

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Zacarias Moussaoui, the first individual charged as an accomplice in the Sept. 11 attacks, has decided to plead innocent to charges he conspired to kill and maim thousands of victims, his lawyer said. "We will be entering a plea of not guilty to all of the charges in the indictment," public defender Frank Dunham, one of three defense attorneys, said prior to Moussaoui's arraignment Wednesday in U.S. District Court, where security was expected to be extraordinarily heavy

At least a dozen U.S. marshals were in the courtroom on Dec. 19 when Moussaoui, who had just been transferred from detention in New York, appeared before a federal magistrate to hear the charges against him read. Security personnel also ringed the federal court building.

Four charges in the six-count indictment could result in Moussaoui's execution, if he were convicted, and U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema set a March 29 deadline for prosecutors to decide whether they would seek the death penalty.

Moussaoui's mother, Aicha el-Wafi, came to the United States from France last week and said her son told her he could prove his innocence. The defendant, 33, is a French citizen of Moroccan descent who received a master's degree in England.

Although Moussaoui has been in federal custody on immigration charges since August, when he aroused suspicions at a Minnesota flight school, the indictment says he conspired with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill and maim victims in the United States. While accusing him of links to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, the indictment does not explain his role in the terror attacks.

Nonetheless, Attorney General John Ashcroft called Moussaoui an "active participant" with the 19 hijackers who crashed four jetliners in New York, Washington and Western Pennsylvania, killing more than 3,000 people.

The indictment accuses Moussaoui of pursuing some of the same activities as the hijackers by taking flight training in the United States, inquiring about crop dusting and purchasing flight deck training videos.

The indictment also said Moussaoui received money in July and August from Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, an alleged member of a German terrorist cell who was a roommate of Mohammed Atta, the suspected ringleader in the attacks. The FBI believes Bin al-Shibh may have been planning to be the 20th hijacker.

A clear indication of the case's importance was Senate passage of legislation to broadcast the trial on closed-circuit television in the cities most affected by the hijackings.

The House has not yet acted on the measure, which is modeled on a similar privilege granted to Oklahoma City bombing victims and families.

Cameras usually are not permitted in federal courtrooms, but Court TV has challenged the rule as unconstitutional and filed a motion to broadcast the proceedings. Brinkema set a Jan. 9 hearing for Court TV's motion and gave the prosecution and defense until Jan. 4 to make their positions known.

The indictment contends that Moussaoui was present at the al-Qaeda-affiliated Khalden Camp in Afghanistan. By the end of September 2000, he was making parallel moves to some of the hijackers with his flight lessons, crop dusting interest and training video purchases.

He attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., between Feb. 26 and May 29, 2001, but ended his classes early.

By Aug. 10, the indictment said, he was attending the Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minn., for simulator training on a Boeing 747 Model 400. Among his possessions was a computer disk with information related to the aerial application of pesticides.

Moussaoui was detained by federal authorities on Aug. 17, two days after the instructor at the academy contacted the FBI.

Moussaoui, according to news reports, aroused suspicion because he didn't seem to understand French although he said he was from France. Suspicions were sharpened because of Moussaoui's limited flying skills. He couldn't fly solo despite his previous lessons in Oklahoma.

The specific charges are conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries; commit aircraft piracy; destroy aircraft; use weapons of mass destruction; murder U.S. employees and destroy U.S. property. Conviction on the first four counts carry a maximum penalty of death, while the last two counts have a maximum of life imprisonment.

Troops honor Trade Center casualties
By Kirk Spitzer, USA TODAY

DASHT-E QAL'EH, Afghanistan — In an emotional ceremony Tuesday in the shadow of northern Afghanistan's battlefields, U.S. Army commandos laid to rest a small piece of the World Trade Center. It was one of many such solemn services taking place across Afghanistan this week as U.S. fighters try to help bring a small sense of closure to the events of Sept. 11. "We want the American people to know that (the victims) didn't die in vain, that they have been remembered ... and that something good can come of this," Master Sgt. John Bolduc said
Leader of a 10-member U.S. Special Forces team that directed devastating airstrikes against the Taliban in this key region, Bolduc and his men buried a thumb-sized metal shard from the World Trade Center in the courtyard of a mud-walled compound.

Similar ceremonies are being held on or near battlefields across Afghanistan by Special Forces teams that operated behind enemy lines during the brief but bloody fighting of last fall and early winter. When the troops return home, commanders plan to present a map of all the burial locations to representatives of New York's police and fire departments, and other city officials.

A small group of New York police and firefighters last month buried a piece of Trade Center debris at the Bagram air base, near Kabul. That base serves as a staging area for humanitarian aid flights and for other U.S. special operations forces. The police officers and firefighters delivered food and clothing to a Kabul orphanage.

The commander of the special operations task force that assisted Afghan opposition forces says the symbolism of bringing debris from New York to this country is powerful. "The attack on Sept. 11 changed all of our lives and the burial of a few pieces of the World Trade Center in Afghanistan soil, where Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters who brought pain and suffering to our great nation were defeated, is meant as a symbol to our brave citizens (and to show that) we will defeat those who dare attack what we love and who we love," Col. John Mulholland said this week.

American military leaders are only now beginning to disclose the key role played by Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, and other clandestine forces. Green Berets are specially trained soldiers who can operate behind enemy lines, training and working with local fighters.

Bolduc's team dropped into northern Afghanistan in late October and directed airstrikes that helped crush the Taliban along a key front line near here, and around the city of Konduz, the Taliban's final northern stronghold.

With his team huddled close by Tuesday, Bolduc read passages from the Bible — Psalms 19 and 23 — as team members buried the small shard. They chose the courtyard of a compound that they have used as their home and headquarters since arriving in Afghanistan.

"This seemed a fitting place. It's been our home. It won't be disturbed here. It will be among people who suffered under the Taliban just as we have," Bolduc said. They left no marker — a choice left up to the various commando teams.

The piece of debris was delivered by helicopter from task force headquarters at a U.S. base in a neighboring country. New York officials gave the debris to Mulholland last month.

More than a dozen Green Beret teams from the 5th Special Forces Group, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., worked behind the lines in Afghanistan. Bolduc's team, Tiger 03, is credited with directing airstrikes that killed some 1,300 Taliban fighters and destroyed more than 50 tanks, artillery pieces, anti-aircraft sites, and command and control bunkers.

With most of the fighting in northern Afghanistan over, Bolduc's team is now performing other missions. Those include directing air drops of humanitarian aid, helping rebuild municipal water and electrical systems and collecting suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders from Northern Alliance prison camps and transferring them to U.S. authorities.