January 4, 2002	Friday	Shawwal 19, 1422

KABUL/WASHINGTON, Jan 3: Afghanistan’s new rulers said on Thursday they were negotiating the surrender of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar as American paratroopers flew in to join the hunt for remnants of Osama bin Laden’s fighters.

Tribal leaders in the southern city of Kandahar said envoys sent into the hills to demand the handover of Mullah Omar had returned having delivered their message and were waiting for a response from those they believe are sheltering the cleric.

“We are still waiting to hear from them about our demands,” Nasratullah, a spokesman for Kandahar intelligence chief Haji Gullalai, said on Thursday. “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.”

With air strikes easing, US forces on the ground are also focusing on the hunt for Taliban leaders and for Osama and members of his Al-Qaeda network.

But the trail of Osama himself seems to have gone cold in the mountainous expanse dividing Afghanistan from Pakistan.

The Pentagon said on Wednesday that hundreds of soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division had arrived at a military airfield in Kandahar, allowing more than 1,000 marines already there to be diverted to other duties.

There have also been reports that US special forces are operating in an area close to where Omar may have taken refuge.

BOUNTY OFFER: Kandahar was the spiritual home of Mullah Omar’s Taliban throughout their five years of dominance in Afghanistan, before US bombing put paid to them when they refused to hand over Osama following September’s attacks.

Omar, who has rarely ever been 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 Helmand province, some 160 kms 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. The United States has put on a bounty on his head and said on Wednesday it expected the Afghan authorities to hand him over if he were captured as a result of the negotiations. Few senior Taliban leaders have yet to be detained.

However, tribal chieftains at Baghran may be eager to prevent their region from becoming a target of US bombing raids, which destroyed the Taliban front lines in November.

In recent days, US air strikes have obliterated at least one village said by US officials to be an ammunition dump for Taliban fighters or Al-Qaeda fighters loyal to Osama.

QAEDA COMPOUND: One of the largest US Marine operations in Afghanistan discovered an Al-Qaeda compound north of Kandahar that had been used in recent weeks but provided little new information about Osama’s network, US newspapers said on Thursday. Some 200 Marines were involved in the raid, the New York Times and Washington Post said. Helicopter gunships and Harrier fighter jets covered their two-day sortie from Kandahar airport.

The compound “had been occupied and deserted and reoccupied during the past several weeks,” Major Chris Hughes of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit told the Times.

The site included caves, an obstacle course and 14 huts tucked against a deep ravine near a paved road in Helmand province. Small arms and some documentation were recovered.

As the quest for information goes 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 to put the Taliban point of view, 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. Zaeef last month said he had applied for temporary asylum in Islamabad.—Reuters