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Friday, November 16, 2001 - Web posted at 9:52:22 am GMT

US special forces hunted for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan on Thursday, as his beleaguered Taliban protectors tried to hold on to their southern base of Kandahar and vowed to fight to the death.

Several thousand Taliban fighters were also resisting troops of the Northern Alliance in the northern city of Kunduz where they were surrounded.

Many were reported to be Arab followers of Bin Laden who feared they would be killed if they surrendered to their native Afghan foes.

"There are 20 000 Taliban in Kunduz, many of them Arabs, and they are trying to break out," said one Northern Alliance official in Dushanbe, the capital of neighbouring Tajikistan."

"They are desperate, they've seen what happens to Arabs when the Northern Alliance gets hold of them," he said.

Many foreigners - including Pakistanis, Chechens and Arabs, spent years fighting for the Taliban under the umbrella of Bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

They are widely hated by many Afghans.

The Pentagon said US warplanes killed some al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in two bombing raids on houses in Kabul and Kandahar this week, launched on the basis of intelligence information.

But Bin Laden was still thought to be alive.

Mullah Omar, the reclusive Taliban leader, breathed defiance despite 40 days of withering air strikes.

"The situation in Afghanistan is part of a big plan including the destruction of the United States," Mullah Omar told the BBC Pashtun service.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdullah as saying Bin Laden, "has already decided that death will be preferable to being arrested by America".

Pakistan moved troops and tanks to its southwest border with Afghanistan in a swift response to reports Bin Laden could try to sneak across the border.

In a move to bolster its ally in the US-led war against terrorism, Washington formally agreed on Thursday to give Pakistan US$600 million in aid.

Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States was sticking to its goals of dismantling al Qaeda and other international terrorist networks and ensuring that weapons of mass destruction did not fall into their hands.

Reports from the Kandahar area and from US officials spoke of anti-Taliban revolts there, and fighting in the city itself.

A group of tribal leaders from southern Afghanistan was trying to negotiate some kind of arrangement to avoid bloodshed and warned the Northern Alliance not to try to take the city.

The US envoy for Afghanistan began talks with Pakistani officials to help push forward urgent international efforts to build a broad-based government in Afghanistan and fill a power vacuum in Kabul.

France said it would send troops to Afghanistan to participate in an international aid mission there in coming days to ensure safe passage of aid and aid convoys.

Tribal leader Hamid Karzai, inside Afghanistan drumming up support for the return of ex-King Zahir Shah, told Reuters the people of Kandahar had revolted against the Taliban.

There was no independent confirmation but non-governmental organisations spoke of reports of hundreds of Afghan families fleeing towards Pakistan because of fighting in the area.

US special forces, who have been on the ground for several weeks, whisked eight foreign aid workers out of Afghanistan, ending an ordeal that began when the Taliban accused them of spreading Christianity - an offence punishable by death."

"It was like a miracle," Georg Taubmann, one of the eight, told reporters in Pakistan where they were taken by helicopter.

The eight - four Germans, two Americans and two Australians working for the German-based Shelter Now International charity - had spent more than three months in detention.

US officials said Washington was prepared to send troops into the southern caves and mountains in a guerrilla campaign to ferret out Bin Laden.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Bin Laden, who has a US$5 million price on his head, had fewer and fewer options.

"The circumstances on the ground have changed dramatically just in a matter of days, and areas that were probably safe for him 48 or 72 hours ago are no longer safe for him," he told CBS television.

Mullah Omar, quoted by a spokesman interviewed by the BBC, said his forces would regroup and fight on.

The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously endorsed an Afghan political plan envisaging a two-year interim government bringing all ethnic groups under one umbrella with a multinational security force to protect them.

Spokesmen for the Northern Alliance said it had no desire to cling to power but that it would run Kabul until a broad-based post-Taliban government was formed.

The Alliance is mainly made up of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks and is distrusted by the country's Pashtun majority, from whom the Taliban drew their support. - Nampa-Reuters

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