KABUL, Jan 9: The United States has demanded the handover of top Taliban leaders who were released after surrendering to Afghan authorities, as it interrogates two suspected Al Qaeda fighters captured in a raid on a cave complex.

The Taliban officials, including three former ministers and five other senior figures, were allowed to go free under a general amnesty after they turned themselves in to authorities in Kandahar province.

Provincial spokesman Khaled Pashtun said on Tuesday the members of the defeated fundamentalist regime had surrendered over the past month since their stronghold in Kandahar city fell to opposition forces.

However, General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said information from the Taliban figures could help in the search for their leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and terror suspect Osama bin Laden.

“Obviously, individuals of that stature in the Taliban leadership are of great interest to the United States, and we would expect that they would be turned over, absolutely,” he said.

“I can say that from the beginning what we want out of this is the al-Qaeda leadership and the Taliban leadership and, of course, that would include bin Laden and that would include Omar,” he said.

Myers said US forces in eastern Afghanistan seeking to wipe out the last of the Taliban, and the al-Qaeda terror network it harboured, had captured a group of 14 Al Qaeda fighters and detained two of them for interrogation.

They were captured late on Monday as US forces swept an area around a former Al Qaeda base in Paktia province, revealing a huge network of caves and underground bunkers, he said in Washington.

Laptop computers, cell phones, small arms and training manuals found with them were being examined by intelligence experts, he said, while the two fighters were transferred to a US camp near Kandahar.

“They become very interesting to us because they’re a part of the worldwide network of terrorism that al-Qaeda supports,” Myers said.

“And so, we would hope to be gleaning, you know, information that might point to future operations, other operatives and so forth.”

Myers said US forces were now holding 364 al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects in Afghanistan and on a US ship off the Gulf of Oman, some of whom would be transferred “soon” to a US naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba.

The multinational peacekeeping force for Afghanistan is steadily building up to its expected full force of 4,500 by the end of the month, with new arrivals nearly every day.

The interior ministry said Afghan military units in Kabul have been ordered to withdraw to their barracks outside the capital within three days, to allow Afghan police and foreign peacekeepers to patrol the city.

“(Interior Minister Yunis) Qanooni has decided that all these military units affiliated to the defence ministry that took part in the conquest of Kabul should evacuate the city within three days,” said Din Mohammad Jorat, chief of the law and order departement at the ministry.

“After that the peacekeeping force along with our police force will be patrolling the city,” he told AFP.

Under an agreement signed between ISAF and the Afghan interim administration, the force is confined to Kabul and its environs and its powers are strictly limited.

In the latest plaudit for Afghan leader Hamid Karzai, US Congressman Frank Wolf said during a visit to Islamabad that he should remain in government once the administration’s six-month term expires.

Wolf said Karzai’s “honesty” would ensure that pledges of financial assistance to rebuild Afghanistan’s infrastructure would be channelled to the right projects rather than into someone’s pocket.—AFP