NEW YORK, Nov 14: US special forces cut off the main roads leading into southern Afghanistan on Wednesday to stop people as fleeing Taliban forces tried to melt into the countryside, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

He said fighting was raging in and around Kandahar and that he expected southern tribes “to assert themselves and take over”.

Speaking amid the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at his side, Rumsfeld said the task now was to find the leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda network.

“It is needless to say gratifying to see the Taliban fleeing and the people of Afghanistan getting their country back,” he said. “On the other hand, our task is to find the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, and we still have that ahead of us.”

“We have to recognize that it is going to continue be a difficult task. Finding handsful of people is indeed like finding needles in haystacks,” he said.

He said some Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders had been killed and others were in hiding, but there were “no particular reports of senior leadership being located”.

Rumsfeld revealed that US special forces teams inserted in the south were “interdicting” the main roads leading into the south from northern Afghanistan.

“I mean they have been interdicting the main roads that connect the north to the south and (acting) to stop people who ought to be stopped,” he said.

The secretary provided no details on who was being stopped, but Taliban and Al Qaeda forces headed south on Monday in a disorderly retreat after abandoning the Afghan capital to Northern Alliance.

The special forces also were carrying out a “series of assessments”, Rumsfeld said.

He indicated that Al Qaeda was still fighting while the Taliban appeared to be fanning out into the countryside.

“The Al Qaeda has pretty much taken over control as far as I can tell,” said Rumsfeld.

“In some parts of the country they have been particularly active fighters and they have been organizers of the Taliban,” he said.

But he said some pieces of the Taliban forces “are melting into the countryside, partly because they may have decided to throw in the towel. In other cases they may simply be waiting to counter-attack at some other time”.

“One ought not necessarily to assume that anything is permanent at this time. Until this country is stabilized, we have to move back and forth,” he said.—AFP