LAHORE, Nov 29: The US would have attacked Afghanistan even if the Taliban had handed over Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept 11 attacks on Washington and New York, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Mulla Abdus Salam Zaeef says.

Talking to reporters here on Thursday, he said a decision to attack Afghanistan had been taken much before the Sept 11 incidents and Osama’s custody was used only as a pretext for the aggression.

America, he said, wanted to uproot the Islamic system enforced by the Taliban and that was the major reason behind all what has been going on since Oct 7, the day the US launched its military strikes against one of the poorest countries of the world.

His deputy, Sohail Shaheen, translated all answers into Urdu.

“The Taliban got their country destroyed, thousands of people killed and their government toppled, but they did not hand over Osama bin Laden to the United States.

“Why Osama is so important for the Taliban?”, he was asked.

The Taliban, he said, stuck to their stand or else they would have trampled their principle and still been attacked.

“But then the world sympathies would have been with the Taliban,” a reporter suggested.

Mulla Zaeef said sympathies of people from across the globe were still with the Taliban, though the thinking of the governments was different.

Replying to a question, he said those killed in Afghanistan had in fact laid down their lives to uphold the Islamic principles. Thus, he argued, the Taliban government could not be held responsible for these killings.

He said thousands of people had been killed so far but their exact number could not be ascertained at this stage.

When it was pointed out that the Islamic world did not agree with the kind of Islam the Taliban had enforced, Mulla Zaeef said this was not a correct assertion.

He said the Taliban had approached religious scholars all over the world asking them to point out any flaws in the system in practice in Afghanistan. He claimed that nobody had raised any finger on whatever the Taliban had done.

Still, he said, the implementation of the Islamic system was the only ‘offence’ committed by the Taliban government.

He dismissed the reported claim by Osama bin laden that he had got nuclear and other weapons. “He doesn’t have any such thing. Had he been in possession of any such thing he would have used now when the entire country has been destroyed.”

Mulla Zaeef alleged that the interview in which Osama had made the claim was “not genuine”.

He regretted that all human rights organization were keeping silent when people in Afghanistan were being massacred.

Asked about the future policy of the Taliban, Mulla Zaeef said it would be decided according to the requirements of the emerging situation. “A decision to continue war or go for peace will be taken keeping in mind the on-ground situation.”

He insisted that the broad-based government being shaped up in Bonn, Germany, would not be able to satisfy the Afghan people or give them their due rights. Had such a setup been workable, the Taliban would have supported it long ago.

He ruled out the possibility of any Taliban leader defecting to the Northern Alliance to be able to join the so-called broad-based government.

He said three provinces were still under the control of the Taliban and they would defend them with full force.

Sohail Shaheen apprehended that now a civil war would start in Afghanistan as the Northern Alliance would not be able to control the situation. It would be a guerilla war and not a conventional war, he said.

He claimed that the Taliban had extended full cooperation to the Pakistan government in tracing ‘outlaws’ wanted by Islamabad. At least half a dozen had also been handed over to Pakistan, he said.

Mr Shaheen said the Taliban had told the Pakistan government that they were free to send their security personnel to Afghanistan to trace the fugitives it was looking for. But, he said, the Pakistan government wanted the Taliban to complete the task on their own.

He said the Taliban government did not know the whereabouts of the people wanted by Pakistan and thus it could not trace them.