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U.S. steps up drive to end Taliban era
By Jonathan Lyons and Sayed Salahuddin
Friday January 4, 7:06 AM
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday the Taliban era in Afghanistan was finished and stepped up efforts to capture or kill the elusive leaders of the austere Islamic movement.
"The Taliban rule in Afghanistan has ended. That is a good thing. It's a good thing for the people of Afghanistan, but it's also a good thing for the people of the world that that country is no longer harbouring terrorists," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing.
"The real task is seeing that they are pursued," said Rumsfeld.
U.S. forces backed up Washington's renewed demands for the capture of deposed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, still at large in the Afghan heartland, with a fresh display of military might.
B-1 bombers, AC-130 gunships and Navy F-18s attack jets unleashed airstrikes at a leadership compound in southern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, said Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The aircraft took aim at the compound in the Khost region south of Tora Bora, the area of caves and tunnels that had been a hiding place for the al Qaeda network.
"This morning ... we conducted strikes between 10 and 11 o'clock our time (1500-1600 GMT) in Afghanistan on a leadership compound, a fairly extensive compound," Myers said. "It had a base camp, training facilities and some caves ... fairly close to the Pakistani border.
The same area was targeted by U.S. cruise missiles in response to the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
U.S. authorities said a high-security jail to hold hardened al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners from Afghanistan was under construction at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
SOUND AND FURY
But for all the sound and fury emanating from the U.S. military, there was apparently no progress in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the Islamic militant blamed by Washington for masterminding both the embassy bombings and the September 11 attacks on America.
Afghanistan's new rulers, meanwhile, said they were negotiating the possible surrender of Mullah Omar. Washington holds the reclusive cleric responsible for providing bin Laden and his al Qaeda network with a safe haven from which to carry out its operations against U.S. and other targets.
In a gesture of growing confidence, the new government in Kabul released 269 front-line Taliban fighters, some of them prisoners for as long as five years.
The White House said on Thursday that interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai had been invited to make an official visit to Washington soon but no date had been set.
Tribal leaders in the southern city of Kandahar said envoys sent into the hills to demand the surrender of Mullah Omar had returned after delivering their message.
"We are still waiting to hear ... about our demands," said Nasratullah, a spokesman for Kandahar intelligence chief Haji Gullalai. "Basically, we have told them clearly that we want the issue to be resolved without bloodshed."
Kandahar was the spiritual home of Mullah Omar's radical Islamist Taliban throughout their five years of dominance in Afghanistan, before U.S. bombing toppled them when they refused to hand over bin Laden following September's attacks.
Mullah Omar, who has only rarely been seen in public, is believed to have taken refuge in the mountains around Baghran in Helmand province, some 100 miles northwest of Kandahar. He is thought to have up to 1,000 fighters defending him.
BEST-KNOWN TALIBAN SAID DETAINED
But it was not clear whether he was under the control of local tribal chieftains who might hand him over.
"Still our people are searching," Haji Pir Mohammad, military assistant to the Helmand governor, Mullah Sher Mohammad Akhandzada, told Reuters.
"But at the moment we have no news of his whereabouts."
One of the largest U.S. Marine operations in Afghanistan discovered an al Qaeda compound in Helmand that had been used in recent weeks but provided little new information about bin Laden's network, U.S. newspapers said.
Some 200 Marines were involved in the raid, The New York Times and Washington Post said. Helicopter gunships and Harrier fighter jets provided air cover for their two-day sortie from their base at Kandahar airport.
As the quest for information went on, the man who became the wartime face of the Taliban for the world's television viewers -- the Taliban envoy to Pakistan -- appeared to have been taken in for questioning by Pakistani authorities.
An aide to Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who gave almost daily news conferences, said the former ambassador had been escorted from his home in Islamabad by men who may have been Pakistani intelligence agents. Pakistani officials declined comment.
In Kabul, the interim government released Taliban prisoners who had been captured by opposing Northern Alliance forces. The 269 men were each given 500,000 afghanis, worth a total of $20, by the International Red Cross.
"In order to restore peace and an atmosphere of freedom in the country, the government decided to release captives taken while fighting the Northern Alliance," said Brigadier Farooq of the Ministry of State Security.
Many of those released, like 20-year-old Doar Mohammad, said they now backed the interim government of Hamid Karzai.
"I believe in God but not in the ideology of the Taliban any more," said Mohammad, who was a prisoner for two years
Friday January 4, 6:07 AM AFP
US warplanes mounted their first raid on Afghanistan in days as Taliban fugitives were said to be ready to hand over their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in exchange for an end to the bombing.
Washington said B-1 bombers, F/A-18 fighter jets and AC-130 gunships hit a sprawling Taliban stronghold and al-Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan.
"There was activity that warranted it be hit," said General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He said the site in Khost province near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan was an extensive leadership facility consisting of a base camp, training facility and caves. The compound had been struck before in a 1998 US cruise missile attack, he said.
Taliban commander Abdul Ahad, also known as Rayes Baghran (chief of Baghran) pledged to hand Omar over in exchange for a halt to the bombing, according to Nasratullah Nasrat of the Kandahar provincial intelligence service.
Rayes Baghran's 1,500 followers in Helmand province, east of Kandahar, would also lay down their weapons as part of the deal, he said.
He said the offer came Thursday after a three-day "shura" -- a meeting of tribal elders -- in Helmand.
Afghan officials had threatened Wednesday to launch a major operation involving up to 5,000 soldiers backed by US Marines, to flush Mullah Omar out if the talks failed.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking in Washington, denied there was a surrender deal.
"It hasn't been made," he said. And I've already said what we would accept. We will accept surrender."
The report came as a force of 800 Afghan troops swept through the Chapparhar district of eastern Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan, in a mopping up operation in quest of al-Qaeda stragglers.
The area the Afghan troops were searching Thursday -- encountering no resistance, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency -- is between the eastern city of Jalalabad and the region of Tora Bora, bin Laden's last known hideout.
British bomb disposal experts, meanwhile, raced against the clock to remove land mines and unexploded ordnance from five sites around Kabul that will be home to the new, UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
In Islamabad, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and one the most visible faces of the now-defunct hardline Muslim regime, was taken from his residence for questioning by Pakistani security officials, his family said.
"People believed to be from the intelligence services came in two vehicles and took him to an unknown place," assuring the family, however, that "there was nothing to worry about" and that he would return home later, Zaeef's nephew, Hamidullah, told AFP.
Newspaper reports said Zaeef had applied for political asylum in Pakistan, but his request was refused.
An official in Kabul said British military engineers were scouring the five future bases of the ISAF, expected to number 4,500 by the end of the month, for mines and unexploded ordnance becauses they "are not yet safe."
Until the bases are cleared, another officer said, "troops will continue to be based at the ISAF headquarters."
But Afghan civilian staff and soldiers are still finding unexploded mines, bullets and mortars within the grounds of the ISAF headquarters, inside the old Afghan officers' sports club, opposite the US Embassy.
Senior British officers described the mine threat as more dangerous than in recent peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia.
The White House meanwhile confirmed Thursday that Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, was expected to meet President George W. Bush at the White House.
"Mr. Karzai wants to say 'thank you' to the American people," said an Afghan spokesman in Washington, adding that the visit was fixed for February.
The last visit to Washington by an Afghan leader was in 1963, when King Mohammed Zahir Shah visited John F. Kennedy.
On the diplomatic front, am senior Iranian official said the presense of US troops in Afghanistan posed a threat to Iran and ruled out improved ties with Washington.
Though the Taliban is a common enemy to both Washington and Tehran, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani was quoted as saying that bilateral ties can improve "only if US threats to Iran recede."
Tensions between India and Pakistan, an offshoot of the 12-week-old Afghan war, continued to simmer although the two countries appeared to have stepped back from the brink of war ahead of a South Asian summit in Kathmandu.
"We feel that the diplomatic initiative is going on the right track," Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan spoke by telephone Thursday, agreeing that the two countries should find a peaceful solution to their dispute, the New China News Agency reported.
And US defense chief Rumsfeld said: "I don't think they are going to go to war."
Pakistan, meanhile, refused to admit some 5,000 fresh refugees from Afghanistan, massed on its western border.
"We have stopped any movement across the borders except for those carrying valid legal travel documents," Foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said.
"Already we are host to more than three million refugees. We cannot take any additional burden
Friday January 4, 2:36 AM AFP
Taliban holdouts offered to surrender their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in exchange for an end to the US bombing of their positions in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan intelligence official said.
If it happens, the surrender of Mullah Omar to the Afghan authorities would signal a major success in the 12-week-old US-led campaign to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and eradicate his al-Qaeda organization and their erstwhile Taliban protectors.
Taliban commander Abdul Ahad, also known as Rayes Baghran -- Chief of Baghran -- said he too would surrender along with his force of up to 1,500 men in Helmand province, east of Kandahar, Nasratullah Nasrat of the Kandahar provincial intelligence service told AFP by telephone.
"Rayes Baghran promised today that he will hand over Mullah Omar and (that his fighters) will lay down their weapons if the aerial bombardment is halted," he said.
He said the offer came Thursday after a three-day "shura" -- a meeting of tribal elders -- in Helmand.
The Taliban warlord told the shura that his forces included militiamen who fled other regions of Afghanistan as Taliban rule collapsed around them, as well as some bin Laden fighters.
The report came as a force of 800 Afghan troops swept through the Chapparhar district of eastern Nangarhar province, bordering Pakistan, in a mopping up operation in quest of al-Qaeda stragglers.
The area the Afghan troops were searching Thursday -- encountering no resistance, according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency -- is between the eastern city of Jalalabad and the region of Tora Bora, bin Laden's last known hideout.
British bomb disposal experts, meanwhile, raced against the clock to remove land mines and unexploded ordnance from five sites around Kabul that will be home to the new, UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
Afghan officials had threatened Wednesday to launch a major operation involving up to 5,000 soldiers backed by US Marines, to flush Mullah Omar out if the talks failed.
In Islamabad, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan and one the most visible faces of the now-defunct hardline Muslim regime, was taken from his residence for questioning by Pakistani security officials, his family said.
"People believed to be from the intelligence services came in two vehicles and took him to an unknown place," assuring the family, however, that "there was nothing to worry about" and that he would return home later, Zaeef's nephew, Hamidullah, told AFP.
Newspaper reports said Zaeef had had applied for political asylum in Pakistan, but his request was refused.
Zaeef told AIP earlier Thursday that he had committed no crime to bar him from being granted asylum, which he said he requested because "the situation in Afghanistan is not conducive" to his return.
"I am not a criminal... I only performed my duty as a diplomat," AIP quoted him as saying.
Pakistani foreign ministry officials said no action had yet been taken on the request.
Zaeef shot to prominence with his globally covered daily news briefings in Islamabad after the October 7 start of the US-led military campaign.
His diplomatic status ended when Islamabad withdrew recognition from the Taliban after they were chased out of Kabul by the US-backed Northern Alliance on November 13.
The surrender of Omar and what is presumably the last major pocket of Taliban resistance should be settled through talks and not through war, Nasrat quoted Abdul Ahad as saying.
"Baghran district had been heavily bombarded, which is why they are talking of the surrender of their weapons and the handover of Mullah Omar," Nasrat said.
"Inshallah (God willing), we may get to an agreement because they have no other way," Nasrat said. "They have been absolutely blockaded and besieged. Baghran is a small district, too small for 1,000 to 1,500 people."
He said Abdul Ahad was also negotiating with Haji Shir Mohammad, the Helmand provincial governor who has proclaimed allegiance to Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai.
"If the Taliban couldn't resist in the whole of Afghanistan, how can they resist in a small district like Baghran?" Nasrat said.
An official in Kabul said British military engineers were scouring the five future bases of the ISAF, expected to number 4,500 by the end of the month, for mines and unexploded ordnance becauses they "are not yet safe."
Until the bases are cleared, another officer said, "troops will continue to be based at the ISAF headquarters."
But Afghan civilian staff and soldiers are still finding unexploded mines, bullets and mortars within the grounds of the ISAF headquarters, inside the old Afghan officers' sports club, opposite the US Embassy.
Senior British officers described the mine threat as more dangerous than in recent peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia.
"I think, for the engineers, it's a bigger challenge than anything we have faced recently," one military demining expert said. "To be honest, if you took the catalogue of the world's mines, you would find them all here."
The ISAF bases will be clustered in Kabul's northeast: two will be located along strategic roads linking Kabul with Jalalabad and the Bagram air base, two will be at the International Airport and a fifth at ISAF headquarters.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, was expected to meet President George W. Bush at the White House in February.
"Mr. Karzai wants to say 'thank you' to the American people," said an Afghan spokesman in Washington.
The last visit to Washington by an Afghan leader was in 1963, when King Mohammed Zahir Shah visited John F. Kennedy.
Tensions between India and Pakistan, an offshoot of the 12-week-old Afghan war, continued to simmer although the two countries appeared to have stepped back from the brink of war ahead of a South Asian summit in Kathmandu.
"We feel that the diplomatic initiative is going on the right track," Pakistani foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said.
Marking an easing of tensions, stocks in Pakistan rose 1.5 percent as foreign investors returned, analysts said, the Karachi index gaining 20 points to 1,351.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan spoke by telephone Thursday, agreeing that the two countries should find a peaceful solution to their dispute, the New China News Agency reported.
If tensions escalate into a fourth war between the two neighbors since independence from Britain in 1947, "it will also impact the Afghan peace process and endanger stability and development in ... Asia as a whole," Tang warned.
In Lucknow, India, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said before leaving for Nepal that war with Pakistan was not a "necessity," but ruled out any dialogue until Islamabad ends "cross-border terrorism".
"If diplomatic methods can be applied to resolve the existing problems, I don't see why we should resort to other means," Vajpayee said.
Pakistan, meanhile, refused to admit some 5,000 fresh refugees from Afghanistan, massed on its western border.
"We have stopped any movement across the borders except for those carrying valid legal travel documents," Foreign ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said. "Already we are host to more than three million refugees. We cannot take any additional burden."
The UNHCR refugee agency said 4,000 to 5,000 people had gathered at Afghanistan's southernmost Chaman crossing since Tuesday, fleeing drought, famine and war.
The Frontier Post
KABUL (Agencies): She’s excited and, like new students everywhere, a little nervous.
Sixteen-year-old Aroosa is back in school for the first time in five years, picking up where she left off when the Taliban rolled into Kabul five years ago.The lanky sixth grader doesn’t mind that most of her classmates are younger than her, some only 11.
She’s just happy to be out of the shadows again, having spent the last five years mostly at home because, as well as banning education for girls after the age of eight, the Taliban restricted their movement. ``I lost my education. I lost my childhood,’’ she said.
Aroosa arrived for her first day back at school Sunday wearing her pride and joy - a pair of used jeans she painstakingly adorned with tiny silver beads on the hem and a delicately embroidered design. As her friends crowded around her, pushing and giggling, she explained how she celebrated the end of the Islamic regime. ``I went out and bought these jeans,’’ she said.
The all-girls school opened last week with about 800 students, said school director Fatima Rizai.
Hidden behind a row of houses, the school is perched on a slight incline. There was no protection against the chilly winter morning. But the students didn’t seem to mind as they packed 25 and 30 to a room. The small ones raced across the rocky school grounds to their classrooms.
In the small dimly lit classrooms, eager students crouched on the floor, balancing notebooks on their knees. Two friends shared one of the few chairs. On a small, cracked blackboard, the
teacher wrote the English alphabet and her students, all girls over 12, repeated each letter. Light streamed through a small opening high in the wall. Cold penetrated the bare cement floor.
Deba, 8, played with her brown crocheted scarf and pondered for a few minutes before deciding what she wanted to be when she finishes school. ``I think I will be an engineer,’’ she said - an unusual preference for girls in Afghanistan who almost invariably pick doctor or teacher.
Deba explained that she would be following in her uncle’s footsteps: ``I think if I am an engineer I can make new buildings and make my country new again.’’ Another girl, Shabna, was 10 when the Taliban took over Kabul. ``I remember my teacher told me: ‘Maybe tomorrow it will be your last day at school.’ I was sad because every other country was going ahead and my country
was going backward,’’ she said.
Devastated by 23 years of war, Afghanistan has lost nearly two generations to relentless violence. Today, teen-age boys swagger down the streets of Kabul, carelessly holding assault rifles or rocket launchers. When asked about their education, few say they have been in school in more than four years. The boys are proud of what little schooling they’ve had, but only rarely do any of
them express a desire to return.
Still, some older girls continued to receive schooling in secret home schools. Shaima Pavez, trained as an electrical engineer, taught 30 girls between the ages of 8 and 12. ``I told the girls to put your books and notebooks under your burqa and if the Taliban stop you and ask you anything, don’t tell them anything. Just tell them you are going to study the Quran,’’
she recalled. Views Expressed and published here are not a property of The FrontierPost;
however FP reserves the right to edit any comments. Messages/comments will be published here within 24 hours of posting.
Thursday January 3, 4:30 AM
KABUL (Reuters) - There was no need for a set designer when a troupe of Afghan actors staged the first play in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban on Wednesday.
The backdrop for the play about the destruction of Afghan culture during 23 years of war was the bombed-out skeleton of a Kabul theatre, ripped apart during fierce fighting between rival factions of mujahideen (holy warriors) in 1992.
In this eerie, soot-stained monument, the troupe of four actors staged their simple but touching show before an audience of some 100 people, including Minister of Culture Raheen Makhdoom and Minister for Women's Issues Sima Samar from the new government that replaced the Taliban.
"I am overjoyed," said actor Najibullah, 39, who wrote, directed and starred in the show, before rushing off to make his first appearance on the stage in 10 years. "The walls and the whole building are clapping for me."
The play began with a shaggy-looking man laughing fanatically as he waved a flaming torch and then lit a bonfire in the pit below the stage, now little more than a pile of crumbling concrete.
As the flames licked up towards the open sky above, Najibullah lamented the death of the building that once hosted concerts and plays in front of a full house of 1,000 people every night.
"They burnt my theatre, they burnt my art, they burnt my house," said Najibullah, who ran a cigarette stall during the Taliban years. "I used to have plenty of spectators, who gave me generous applause and gifts. Now my spectators are nothing but coal dust."
PEACE BRINGS HOPE
Najibullah and his mourning cast were eventually consoled by the appearance of Peace in the form of a young girl in a white wedding dress. "Now the time comes when there will be no sorrow," she declared to rapturous applause.
A local singer and a group of musicians then performed Afghan folk songs as members of the audience clapped and danced in unison -- another form of entertainment banned by the Taliban.
"We want to show the destruction not only of the theatre, but all around the country, caused by foreign invaders and internal conflict," said one of the actresses, Karima, 32, who ran a home beauty parlour under the Taliban. "We want the theatre to be as it was 10 years ago," she said. "And we want to encourage especially women artists to come back to the theatre."
The theatre, in a Kabul suburb, was destroyed in 1992 during fighting between ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, now deputy defence minister, and mujahideen faction leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, now in exile in Iran.
"This was as beautiful as the Kennedy Centre," said Narine Gross, an Afghan woman rights activist who left Kabul 37 years ago and now lives in Washington. "This is like the phoenix rising," she said. "There is so much hope in this destroyed place."
At the end of the show, Minister of Culture Makhdoom addressed the audience. "This is what our enemies did to us," he said. "But I swear to God we will rebuild this. We will rebuild this country. We will rebuild everything. I swear to God, I swear to God, I swear to God." Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of Reuters Limited
Copyright © 2002 Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Updated on 1/3/2002 10:48:04 AM
The Frontier Post
KABUL (Variety): Foreign governments and international broadcasters are lining up to help Afghan television get back on its feet after its five-year closure under the Taliban. Offers of assistance - mainly programming - have come from Iran, India, Turkey, Germany, Japan and China, while Unesco has set aside $35,000 to train technical staff.
Italy’s media mogul and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi offered Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai an entire TV station when they met in Rome earlier this month.
Afghan TV station head Abdul Afiz does not, however, yet have a clear idea of what exactly the Italian offer entails. “I had talks with an official from Italy, but I’m not sure what was
promised,” Afiz said.
“Once it gets here, we’ll know more, but we’re waiting for the transport to improve to be able to get it here.” While Afiz and his team will welcome modern broadcasting equipment, they have already performed miracles with the equipment they hid when the Taliban swept to power in 1996, imposing Islamic law on the country under which all entertainment, including film and TV, was banned.
Within hours of the Taliban’s retreat from Kabul on the night of Nov. 12, Afghan television was back on air, complete with a female announcer.
With the Taliban now ousted throughout the country and a new interim administration headed by Pashtun tribal leader Karzai in place, TV has again become the main source of entertainment for Afghans in Kabul. On air from 6-9 p.m. - sometimes till 10 - the station’s blend of news,
music, sport and movies is watched by 500,000 viewers nightly, according to Afiz.
While he dreams of a 24-hour modern service that will reach all Afghans, for now he is content to try to restore Afghan television to the glory of pre-Taliban times when it broadcast six hours a day. Afiz’s immediate challenge is to find other sources of cash.
With barely any advertising to speak of, the broadcaster’s main source of funding is the defense ministry, which in return demands a nightly dose of “military programming” - interviews with soldiers, profiles on military commanders and highlights of the five-year battle by the Northern Alliance against the Taliban.
Afiz also aims to replace the high-quality antennas on a mountaintop near Kabul that were destroyed during the US bombing campaign against the Taliban.
Regional 200-watt transmitters were moved from outlying areas and mounted on the roof of a hotel - enough to do the job of reaching most of Kabul. But for a proper service, Afiz wants a 500-watt antenna installed on the mountain again. Paying for programming, too, is a problem, given that 90% is made locally.
Which is why he dug into his archives and found material from five years ago, much of it deteriorated, due to poor storage conditions.
And then there are the government censors, installed by the Soviets during their 1979-89 invasion of Afghanistan and who have reappeared with the reopening of the station.
But whereas during Soviet times the censors were answerable directly to the politburo and were “very busy,” these days the officials are drawn from the defense, interior and secret service departments and “do not interfere at all.” Asked what they do all day, Afiz answered, “They come to the office, drink tea and then go home again.” Has the US offered to replace the antenna
its warplanes bombed or assist in any other way? “Not yet,” he replied. “They’re still too busy looking for Osama bin Laden.” Views Expressed and published here are not a property of The FrontierPost; however FP reserves the right to edit any comments.
U.S. sends paratroops to Afghanistan as allies hunt Omar
By Jonathan Lyons and Jeremy Page
Thursday January 3, 4:59 PM
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military is airlifting hundreds of paratroops into southern Afghanistan to join the hunt for leaders of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and his Taliban protectors.
As Washington's Afghan allies tried to negotiate the bloodless surrender of ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Pentagon said it was counting on Afghanistan's interim government to hand him over if he were taken.
In the United States, all eyes were on the first person indicted in connection with the September 11 suicide hijackings there as Zacarias Moussaoui appeared in court facing charges that could carry the death penalty.
"The U.S. forces in Afghanistan continue to be focused on what we have said are our primary objectives right now. That is to pursue and get the Taliban and the al Qaeda leadership," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in Washington.
With its air campaign winding down, the U.S. military has been concentrating on ground operations, raiding suspected Taliban hideouts and questioning captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.
But the trail of bin Laden, accused by Washington of masterminding the September 11 attacks that killed almost 3,300 Americans and other nationals, appears to have gone cold in the mountainous expanse that divides Afghanistan from Pakistan.
Clarke said on Wednesday that several hundred members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division had arrived at a military airfield in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south.
The paratroops, who will eventually total more than 1,000, would replace more than 1,000 Marines already there, she said.
U.S. officials said earlier the Marines would be diverted to other unspecified duties.
Clarke told reporters U.S. forces were now questioning 221 al Qaeda and Taliban "detainees" at facilities in Afghanistan and aboard the Navy warship Bataan in the northern Indian Ocean.
She spoke as Afghan officials negotiated with trapped Taliban fighters. "It's been made very clear that we expect to have control of him (Mullah Omar)," said Clarke.
"IT IS THEIR DECISION"
A spokesman for Haji Gullalai, intelligence chief in Kandahar, said envoys sent to negotiate the surrender of Mullah Omar had returned, and they hoped the talks would lead to his capture without bloodshed.
"We are still waiting to hear from them about our demands," the spokesman said. "Basically, we have told them clearly that we want the issue to be resolved without bloodshed and it is their decision how they want to respond."
Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric rarely seen in public and who lost one eye fighting the 1979-89 Soviet occupation, is believed to have taken refuge in the mountains around Baghran in southern Helmand province, some 160 km (100 miles) northwest of Kandahar.
He is thought to have up to 1,000 fighters defending him.
But it was not clear if he was under the control of local tribal chieftains who might be prepared to hand him over.
In the United States, Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent, appeared in a court in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon that was badly damaged in the September 11 suicide attacks.
"In the name of Allah I do not have anything to plead. I enter no plea. Thank you very much," he told the court.
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 opening arguments to begin on October 14.
Moussaoui's mother headed back to France after issuing a public plea that her son's life be spared. She declined to visit her son after authorities said an FBI agent would be present.
As post-war Afghanistan struggles to rebuild, a team from 12 nations contributing to a British-led foreign security force in Kabul began surveying the shattered 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.
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.
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.
Thursday January 3, 5:42 PM
KABUL (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake hit Afghanistan and neighbouring countries on Thursday, the epicentre in the same province where more than 8,000 people were killed by two quakes in 1998.
The quake sent families running from their homes in the capital of Tajikistan to the north and rattled Pakistan and India to the east, but there were no reports of casualties or damage.
Scientists from the seismic centre in the northern Pakistan city of Peshawar said the quake -- which struck at 12.05 p.m. (0705 GMT) -- measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and its epicentre was in the Hindu Kush mountain range in Afghanistan.
An official with the India Meteorological Department put the scale of the quake at 6.3 on the Richter scale.
Force six is powerful enough to cause widespread damage.
The official said tremors were felt as far away as New Delhi because the epicentre was deep inside the earth in Afghanistan. He said the tremors measured 3.0 on the Richter scale in Delhi and there were no reports of damage.
Speaking by satellite phone from Talooqan, the provincial capital of Afghanistan's Takhar province, Mohammad Osman described the quake as "very intense", but said he had not heard of any damage.
In the Tajik capital of Dushanbe, families left their shaken homes in panic. Some said the tremors had been the strongest in months, if not years.
An official at Dushanbe's seismological station told Reuters several strong tremors had been registered at 1207 (0707 GMT) and measured up to five on the open ended Richter scale.
Takhar and adjacent Badakhshan were struck twice by earthquakes in 1998 which killed several 8,500 people and destroyed tens of thousands of houses. They measured 6.1 and 6.9 on the Richter scale.
"Villages are isolated and mostly inaccessible so it will require a lot of time to have a clear idea of the size of destruction and casualties," Osman said.
One resident of the Afghan capital, Mohammad Razar, 55, said it was the strongest earthquake to hit the city in his lifetime.
Earlier on Thursday, a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale rocked the remote South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu, causing a landslide and damaging buildings but leading to only minor injuries.
The capital Port Vila bore the brunt of quake and was being shaken by smaller after-shocks hours later, keeping people outdoors in case of further damage to buildings, officials said.
Thursday January 3, 7:29 PM
DHAKA (Reuters) - Dhaka police on Thursday broke up protests by hundreds of Muslims opposed to the war in Afghanistan, ahead of a two-day visit to Bangladesh by the British Prime Minister.
Police armed with automatic rifles, batons and teargas drove away around 500 protesters who were supporting Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant blamed by U.S. President George W. Bush for the September 11 hijacked aircraft attack on New York and Washington.
"Blair and Bush are the world's staunchest terrorists and enemies of Islam," chanted one protester from the Islamic Constitution Movement.
"They must not be allowed to hoodwink the Muslims in the name of hunting bin Laden or squander resources of the Muslim nations."
Police scuffled with protesters, seizing several effigies of Blair before the protesters -- chanting "Tony Blair go home" -- could set them on fire.
The British Prime Minister is due to land in Dhaka at 1300 GMT for a two-day visit before heading to India and Pakistan to try to ease tension between the two nuclear rivals.
Officials said Blair was expected to discuss economic, regional and international issues, including Afghanistan, with Bangladesh Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia and President A.Q.M. Badruddoza Chowdhury.
Later in the day Dhaka was calm again but security was tight with police sentries stationed at street corners.
The Bangladeshi government has supported the U.S.-led campaign to capture bin Laden and has allowed U.S. forces to use Bangladesh air space and military facilities in its war against terrorism.
But many people in predominantly Muslim Bangladesh have opposed what they called was indiscriminate U.S. bombings on Afghanistan killing thousands of civilians.
Khaleda will leave Dhaka for Kathmandu on Friday to attend a summit of south Asian leaders.
Thursday January 3, 7:34 PM
NEW DELHI/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - India and Pakistan exchanged fire in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir once again on Thursday as international efforts to defuse a standoff between the nuclear rivals gathered momentum.
With the leaders of both India and Pakistan due to attend a weekend South Asian summit in Nepal, the United States and China both urged the two sides to work for a diplomatic resolution to their dispute.
Britain's prime minister, Tony Blair, headed for the region on trip that had been planned before the crisis but the White House said that U.S. President George W. Bush had enlisted Blair to try to nudge the two towards talks.
Inside Indian-ruled Kashmir, Islamic guerrillas ambushed the army killing two soldiers and wounding seven, in the latest incident inside the volatile state that is the focus of a tense military standoff between at the two neighbours.
"If the situation gets out of control and results in large scale armed conflict, not only would India and Pakistan both suffer, it would also influence the peace process in Afghanistan, and endanger the stability and development of South Asia and even all of Asia," China's Xinhua News Agency quoted its Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan Tang as telling U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a telephone conversation.
Tang was speaking ahead of a visit to China by Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, who has won praise from Bush for cracking down on militants India blames for a bloody December 13 suicide attack on its parliament.
Musharraf told Pakistan state television before leaving for China he hoped the summit would help promote peace. "I hope that with the help of this meeting there should be a discussion... about the peace and tranquility of this region," he said.
China, which controls a sliver of the Kashmir region, will stress its desire for Musharraf to stave off war.
India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, will also attend the summit but Indian officials have played down prospects for a meeting between the two at the summit, which is essentially an economic meeting.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over Kashmir. They carried out tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998.
Mainly Hindu India has long accused Muslim Pakistan of sponsoring about a dozen Islamic groups fighting its rule in Jammu and Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state.
ISLAMIC MILITANTS
It blamed Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad for the attack on its parliament, a raid that triggered the latest standoff and India's biggest military buildup since exercises near the border in 1987.
Islamic militants, loathe to see India and Pakistan reconcile, have said they are moving from Pakistan to Indian-ruled Kashmir and vowed to step up their operations.
Jaish and Lashkar say about 100 activists across Pakistan have been detained in a sweep that netted Jaish leader Maulana Masood Azhar and Lashkar's former leader, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed.
Separatist violence has killed at least 30,000 people since 1989 in the land of lush valleys and soaring Himalayan peaks.
The latest ambush in Jammu and Kashmir came late on Wednesday 180 km (110 miles) north of Jammu, the state's winter capital.
India and Pakistan have traded fire almost daily along the rugged border between Indian and Pakistan-administered Kashmir since the attack on parliament.
Pakistani officials said one woman was killed overnight by unprovoked Indian mortar and machinegun fire across a ceasefire line in Kashmir. Pakistani troops returned fire, they added.
Vajpayee on Wednesday rattled his sabre to a domestic audience in northern Uttar Pradesh, a populous Hindu heartland state holding key assembly elections next month.
"Whatever weapon is available, we will use it to defend ourselves," he said in his Lucknow constituency.
The foreign ministers of India and Pakistan shook hands in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, after arriving on Wednesday for this weekend summit, though it was not clear if the encounter was mere courtesy or signalled a thaw.
Pakistan is seeking talks with its arch foe at the summit, but India wants Pakistan to take more action against "cross-border terrorism" before agreeing to meet.
Britain played down suggestions Blair would mediate but White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush called Blair as "part of the ongoing discussion about the ways our two nations can work together to help reduce tensions".
An Indian official said Blair would meet Vajpayee on Sunday and have talks in Pakistan with Musharraf on Monday.
India has hinted it could conduct "surgical" air strikes against militant bases in Pakistan's part of Kashmir, saying Kashmiri militants have received training in Afghanistan and probably have links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda.
Washington and London are concerned hostilities between India and Pakistan could undermine the U.S.-led coalition against terrorism in which Pakistan has played a key role.
Washington does not want to see Pakistani troops, hunting al Qaeda troops fleeing Afghanistan, diverted to the Indian border.
Thursday January 3, 3:38 PM AFP
The first man to face trial for the September 11 terror attacks against the United States refused to enter a plea here as more peacekeepers arrived in Afghanistan and Germany sent a naval fleet to join the war on terrorism.
Zacarias Moussaoui, a 33-year-old Frenchman, declined to enter a plea at his arraignment here on charges of conspiring with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network to kill thousands of Americans.
Federal Judge Leonie Brinkema entered not guilty pleas on his behalf and fixed a trial date for mid-October.
In Afghanistan, the international peacekeeping force established to shore up the country's new government began to take shape while US and allied forces pursued the war on terrorism, triggered by the September 11 attacks which left more than 3,000 people dead.
Germany, meanwhile, dispatched a naval fleet to the Horn of Africa to support the campaign to stamp out terrorism, while authorities in Yemen reportedly detained 46 foreign students of a religious school for suspected links to terrorism.
In court here, Moroccan-born Frenchman Moussaoui declined to plead, saying: "In the name of Allah, I don't have anything to plead. I enter no plea."
The judge set an October date for the trial in which 19 others -- all of whom are dead -- were named as co-conspirators in the September 11 suicide hijackings of four airliners that crashed in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
US officials believe Moussaoui was to have been the 20th hijacker had he not been arrested on immigration charges in Minnesota on August 16.
In Kabul, 24 officers from 12 countries arrived to pave the way for an international security force, the details of which remained sketchy despite weeks of negotiations.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), eventually expected to number 4,500, will be led by Britain for the first half of its six-month mandate, coinciding with the agreed lifespan of the Afghan interim government of Hamid Karzai.
ISAF chief of staff Colonel Richard Barrons said the officers who arrived Wednesday -- with a first contingent of 156 French troops joining the 270 Britons already there -- were all reconnaissance experts who will survey the five sites identified as bases for the force.
The officers -- nine from Germany; two each from Spain, France, Greece and Italy; and one each from the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Romania, Finland and Sweden -- will also assess the needs of their own troops, he said.
The main task of the ISAF, Barrons said, was to provide support and security to the interim administration sworn in for a six-month period on December 22.
But as the first elements of the force arrived, former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah issued a thinly veiled warning about interference by foreign powers in Afghan affairs.
"It is the foreign interference which has destroyed the equilibrium," the 87-year-old ex-king, who lives in exile in Rome, told the French newspaper Le Figaro.
"The solution to the interethnic problem evidently lies in noninterference from foreign nations, whether or not they are Afghanistan's neighbours," he added.
Meanwhile, US and Afghan leaders in the south of the country prepared to deal a final blow to the Taliban militia, driven from power in November by an opposition offensive backed by massive US air raids.
Haju Gulalai, the new government's intelligence chief in Kandahar, told AFP that a "clean-up operation" involving more than 4,000 militiamen backed by US Marines would be launched against Taliban sympathisers within days if they did not agree to hand over their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke reiterated Wednesday that the United States would ask for Omar to be handed over if he surrenders.
US Marines launched an intelligence-gathering operation against a compound in Helmand province on Tuesday, Pentagon officials said, sparking speculation that a major operation to capture Omar was in the offing.
Omar is said to be under the protection of a pro-Taliban warlord in Baghran, in the north of the province, but US spokesmen denied their raid was a bid to capture him. The Marines had returned to base Wednesday.
Since the collapse of the Taliban, the main goal of the US-led coalition fighting in Afghanistan has been to capture Omar and bin Laden, the Saudi-born radical alleged to have ordered the September 11 attacks on US cities.
US forces have apparently been without news of bin Laden, the head of the al-Qaeda network of Islamic extremists, since his mainly Arab fighters were driven from their mountain strongholds in eastern Afghanistan last month.
Since then, the US campaign has been blighted by two apparent bombing errors in which up to 160 Afghan civilians were reported killed, leading to calls last week from some Afghan officials for a rapid end to air raids.
But Karzai gave the airstrikes cautious backing and thanked the United States for its part in fighting "terrorism" in Afghanistan.
"We want to finish terrorists in Afghanistan; we want to finish them completely," Karzai told the New York Times. "But we must also make sure our civilians do not suffer."
In an effort to boost the campaign against terrorism, Germany deployed a naval fleet of six ships to the Horn of Africa Wednesday. The ships -- including the two frigates Emden and Cologne -- left the naval port of Wilhelmshaven in northwestern Germany around midday, bound for Djibouti, according to a diplomatic source.
Djibouti shares a border with Somalia, which the United States suspects may be sheltering members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The Somali al-Ittihad al-Islamiya fundamentalist organization has links with al-Qaeda
Thursday January 3, 7:31 PM
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The former Afghan Taliban ambassador to Pakistan was taken from his home in Islamabad on Thursday for questioning by Pakistan officials, an aide said.
"He was taken by four men. They could have been from the intelligence services," said the aide of Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef.
A spokesman for the Pakistan foreign ministry told a daily briefing that he had no information on the matter. Other officials were not immediately available for comment.
Zaeef was one of the best-known faces of the Afghan crisis and on December 23 said he had applied for political asylum in Pakistan following the collapse of the Taliban.
He said at the time his application was only for temporary asylum in Pakistan, where he served as the sole spokesman for the fundamentalist militia during the U.S. strikes on the isolated Taliban government.
On Wednesday, a Pakistan government official said his asylum application was still being examined.
Zaeef became famous as the Taliban's principal voice to the outside world following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
He was one of three Taliban ambassadors until Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates broke off diplomatic relations under pressure from the United States in September, leaving Zaeef as the sole spokesman.
The bespectacled 34-year-old ethnic Pashtun, with his bushy black beard, black turban, white tunic and loose trousers, held regular news conferences in Islamabad which were broadcast live almost daily around the world.
He put forward the Taliban case with an idiosyncratic mix of lecture, metaphor and humour, providing a line of communication with his isolated and reclusive leaders, until Pakistan ordered the closure of the Taliban embassy on November 22.
It is believed that he has two wives and several children and is loath to return to Afghanistan for fear for their safety
Thursday January 3, 6:54 PM AFP
Afghan troops launched a mopping up operation for al-Qaeda stragglers, as British demolition experts raced to remove land mines from sites that will house a new international security force.
After the US vowed Wednesday to use all its resources to capture al-Qaeda and Taliban militants still at large, some 800 Afghan troops launched a massive operation in eastern Nangarhar province for al-Qaeda fighters on the run, the Pakistan-based the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency said.
It said troops searching the Chapparhar region faced no resistance.
A British official in Kabul said British military engineers were scouring the ground at five sites selected to house the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is expected to number 4,500 by the end of the month, for mines and unexplodede ordnance.
Britain's military spokesman in Kabul, Major Guy Richardson, told AFP that the five bases were not yet free of the mines, rockets, mortars, artillery shells and other weaponry that litter Afghanistan.
With a further 60 British staff officers scheduled to arrive late Thursday, Richardson said de-mining and bomb disposal efforts at the bases and at Kabul International Airport were a matter of priority.
"The bases are not yet safe," Richardson said. "EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) operations are still under way."
More than 20 officers from 12 of the 17 countries that will contribute to the force are now inspecting the sites to assess when they will be ready for billeting, Richardson said.
ISAF chief of staff Colonel Richard Barrons said the officers who arrived Wednesday -- nine from Germany, two each from Spain, France, Greece and Italy and one each from the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Norway, Romania, Finland and Sweden -- were all reconnaissance experts.
They joined a first contingent of 156 French troops and 270 Britons already on the ground as part of the force, which will be led by Britain for the first half of its six-month existence, with Turkey expected to take over for the final three months.
"They (the officers) will continue to inspect the bases and make some recommendations this afternoon," he said. "Until then, troops will continue to be based at the ISAF headquarters."
But Afghan civilian staff and soldiers are still finding unexploded mines, bullets and mortars within the grounds of the ISAF headquarters, inside the old Afghan officers' sports club, opposite the US embassy.
"There is a mine threat here, as indeed there is everywhere else," Richardson told journalists during a tour of the compound Wednesday.
Senior British officers described the land mine threat as even more dangerous than in recent peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia.
"I think, for the engineers, it's a bigger challenge than anything we have faced recently," one military expert said. "To be honest, if you took the catalogue of the world's mines, you would find them all here."
The five ISAF bases will be clustered in Kabul's north-east; two will be located along strategic roads linking Kabul with the former Soviet air base at Bagram, 50 kilometres (31 miles) to the north, and with the eastern city of Jalalabad.
Two separate bases will be inside Kabul International Airport, while the fifth, the peacekeepers' headquarters, will remain within the old Afghan army officers' sports club, across from the US Embassy.
The area the Afghan troops were searching Thursday is between Jalalabad and the region of Tora Bora, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's last known hiding place.
Afghan officials have also announced a major operation, involving up to 5,000 Afghan soldiers backed by US Marines, to flush out Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar from his hiding place in the south of the country.
More than 1,000 troops from the US Army's 101st Airborne Division will move into a southern Kandahar base by the weekend to replace troops operating in the region, a Pentagon spokeswoman said.
Afghan officials say negotiations are underway with pro-Taliban commanders harboring Omar in neighbouring Helmand province, but that the operation will quickly be launched if they fail.
The United States has offered 25 million dollar rewards for both Omar and bin Laden, wanted for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
Afghan officials said Taliban intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah was killed along with up to 50 of his men in a US bombing raid in Ghazni province on Monday.
However, the Pentagon said that while US warplanes struck a compound of the Taliban's intelligence ministry, it did not have "proof positive" to confirm Ahmadullah's death.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, reported Thursday that Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, is expected to meet President George W. Bush at the White House in February.
"Mr. Karzai wants to say 'thank you' to the American people for (their) support, and to the administration and to Congress," Haron Amin, the new Afghan government's spokesman in Washington, said. "It is the first visit in such a long time, and it will signify a restoration of the formal and strong relations the two countries used to have."
The last visit to Washington by an Afghan head of state was in September 1963, when King Mohammed Zahir Shah visited US president John F. Kennedy.
Meanwhile, thousands of panicked people rushed to the streets of Kabul Thursday as an earthquake which had its epicenter in the Hindu Kush shook the devastated city for several seconds.
The tremor, which Pakistani officials measured at 5.8 on the Richter scale and also was felt in northern Pakistan and India, sent buildings in Kabul swaying and damaged some houses.
The defence ministry said it was gathering information countrywide to assess the extent of damage, if any.
Thursday January 3, 5:33 PM AFP
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to arrive in Bangladesh, kicking off a South Asia tour which will focus on reducing tensions between nuclear rivals India and Pakistan.
Blair, who was due to land in Dhaka at 7:00 pm (1300 GMT), will be received by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, officials here said, adding the two leaders will immediately hold talks.
The British premier, on a two-day working visit, is the first major foreign leader to visit Bangladesh since Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led Islamist allied government came to power after a landslide victory in a general election on October 1.
Their talks are expected to cover bilateral matters, including economic and investment cooperation between Dhaka and London, official sources said.
They added the two leaders may also discuss current international events, including the US-led war on terrorism and the situation in war-ravaged in Afghanistan.
On the bilateral front "the visit bears a special importance ... it marks the new chapter in the bilateral relations between Bangladesh and the UK," a foreign ministry statement here said earlier.
Local media reported that Blair, who will be accompanied by his wife Cherie, may ask predominantly Muslim Bangladesh to contribute troops to the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan.
Blair will also meet President Badruddoza Chowdhury and visit the National Memorial to those who died in Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence, as well as a nearby model village.
On Friday, Blair will fly to the Indian city of Bangalore, prior to official talks with Indian leaders in New Delhi on Sunday. He is scheduled to fly to Pakistan the following day.
India and Pakistan have been massing troops and armour on their border since India accused Pakistan's military intelligence of masterminding last month's attack on the Indian parliament, which left 14 people dead, including all five suspected militant gunmen.
The crisis, which has brought the two rivals to the brink of a fourth war, has been watched with growing concern by the international community, which fears it could undermine the global coalition against terrorism.
Pakistani troops involved in the hunt for al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden -- accused of masterminding the September 11 atrocities in the United States -- have apparently been redeployed along the Indian border.
In London, Downing Street said Blair was expected to urge the two nuclear-power nations to pull back from military confrontation.
Thursday January 3, 5:05 PM AFP
The hunt for fugitive members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and the Taliban regime intensified after the US said it would use all its resources to capture those still at large.
Some 800 Afghan troops launched a massive operation to hunt down al-Qaeda fighters -- who went on the run after the defeat of their Taliban protectors -- in eastern Nangarhar province, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.
Quoting witnesses, the Pakistan-based news agency said the troops engaged in the intense search were facing no resistance.
Chapparhar sits between the eastern city of Jalalabad, and the Tora Bora region which is bin Laden's last known hiding place. Afghan authorities suspect many Arab al-Qaeda fighters have taken refugee there.
Afghan officials have also said they are planning a major operation to flush out Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar from his hiding place in the south, using up to 5,000 Afghan soldiers backed by US Marines.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that rounding up al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders remained a primary US goal, although it denied reports the marines were specifically on a hunt for Omar.
"We'll use whatever resources -- in a very forward leaning manner -- whatever resources it takes to get them, including special operation forces," said Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke.
More than 1,000 troops from the US Army's 101st Airborne Division will move into the southern Kandahar base over the next couple of days to replace troops who have been operating in the region, she added.
Afghan officials say negotiations are underway with pro-Taliban commanders harboring Omar in neighbouring Helmand province, but that the "clean-up" operation will go ahead shortly if they fail.
The United States has offered 25 million dollar rewards for both Omar and Osama bin Laden, who is wanted "dead or alive" for the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Afghan officials have said the Taliban's former intelligence chief, Qari Ahmadullah, was killed along with up to 50 of his men in a US bombing raid in Ghazni province on Monday.
However, the Pentagon said that while US warplanes struck a compound of the Taliban's intelligence ministry, it did not have "proof positive" to confirm Ahmadullah's death.
Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai is expected to meet with President George W. Bush at the White House in February, according to a report in The Washington Post Thursday.
The deployment of the international peacekeeping force for Afghanistan has begun in earnest, with the arrival Wednesday of the first French troops and an advance party of officers from 12 nations.
A further 60 British staff officers are scheduled to arrive in Kabul late Thursday, Britain's military spokesman Major Guy Richardson said.
Military engineers are racing the clock to remove land mines and other unexploded ammunition from five sites chosen to house peacekeeping troops whose numbers will rise to 4,500 by the end of January.
Senior British officers here describe the threat posed by land mines in particular as even more dangerous than the conditions encountered during recent peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and Bosnia.
Britain will lead the force for the first three months of its six-month deployment, before handing over to Turkey.
In Kabul Thursday, thousands of people rushed out in panic onto the streets as an earthquake centred on the Hindu Kush region shook the devastated city for several seconds.
The tremor, which Pakistani officials said measured 5.8 on the Richter scale and also affected major Pakistani and Indian cities, sent buildings in Kabul swaying and caused some damage to houses.
The defence ministry said it was gathering information from across the country so it could assess the extent of the damage.
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