Wednesday, November 21, 2001

Pentagon may halt bombing for talks
By Matt Kelley
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon might halt some bombing in Afghanistan while negotiations continue between opposition forces and anti-Taliban and al-Queda fighters holed up in the only northern city that has not fallen.

Negotiations with the Taliban commander of Kunduz aim to secure the surrender of the city of 100,000 and stave off what threatens to be the bloodiest battle yet of the Taliban’s collapse.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said he is against any deal that would allow Taliban or terrorist forces to escape to do harm in another country another day.

But Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said Tuesday that bombing could be halted if opposition forces asked.

“If the opposition would ask us not to bomb a specific facility or location so they could continue discussion, we’ll certainly honor that,” Stufflebeem told a Pentagon news conference.

Thousands of foreign fighters, including 1,000 in Osama bin Laden’s al-Queda network, bitterly oppose surrender.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is hoping Afghans, and not U.S soldiers, will track down top al-Queda terrorist leaders.

The $25 million bounty offered for Osama bin Laden and his top aides, plus additional reward money from the CIA, should encourage “a large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves, looking for the bad folks,” Rumsfeld said Monday.

U.S. special forces and CIA operatives for some time have been spreading the word on the ground that money would be given to Afghans who cooperate with the campaign to get bin Laden and Taliban leaders. Starting Sunday, the rewards also were publicized on Air Force radio broadcasts and in leaflets dropped over Afghanistan, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Tuesday.

The U.S. hunt for terrorist leaders has already met with some success. The Nov. 14 airstrike on a building south of Kabul that killed al-Queda’s military chief, Mohammed Atef, also killed another 50 al-Queda members, several senior Taliban officials, and an undisclosed number of Taliban fighters, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

At a Monday news conference, Rumsfeld also said the United States would not allow Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to leave his hometown of Kandahar, even if the anti-Taliban forces surrounding the city offer him safe passage. Rumsfeld added that he hopes Taliban and al-Queda fighters holding the northern Afghan town of Kunduz are killed or captured, not released.

“The idea of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief somewhere else is not a happy prospect,” he said. “So my hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner.”

Speaking on the 44th day of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan, President Bush said the military was closing in on bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “The noose is beginning to narrow,” Bush said.

“If our military knew where Mr. bin Laden was, he would be brought to justice,” Bush said following a Cabinet meeting. Asked whether he had evidence that U.S. forces were closing in on bin Laden, Bush said, “It’s going to be hard to tell you that without compromising the search, except I can point to the map of Afghanistan, where more and more territory are now in friendly hands.”

Rumsfeld was more cautious.

“As enemy leaders become fewer and fewer, that does not necessarily mean that the task will become easier,” he said. “People can hide in caves for long periods. This will take time.

He denied reports that U.S. intelligence has defined a narrow search area for bin Laden and his associates.

“To try and think that we have them contained in some sort of a small area I think would be a misunderstanding of the difficulty of the task,” he said.

If the job of finding bin Laden falls to the U.S. military, it will require different kinds of troops than the special operations forces now in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said. He did not elaborate, but other officials have said an infantry unit like the Army’s 10th Mountain Division might get the assignment.