Dostum & Taliban Commander Discuss Kunduz Fate

16/05/2001| IslamWeb

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan (Islamweb & News Agencies) - All Taliban forces in the besieged northern Afghan enclave of Kunduz have agreed to surrender, a top Taliban commander said early on Thursday.Kunduz Taliban commander Mullah Faizal was speaking to reporters in the nearby town of Mazar-i-Sharif, which is under Northern Alliance control, after talks with Alliance leaders in which he and his colleagues agreed to surrender.
Faizal said all the Taliban forces in the city, Afghans and foreigners alike, were under his control and all would give themselves up.
``There will be peace,'' he told a Reuters Television correspondent, one of several reporters allowed into the meeting room. ``Nothing (violent) will happen (in Kunduz),'' he added. The talks were continuing to work out details of the surrender.
Alliance commander Abdul Rashid Dostum told reporters at the talks that the Kunduz problem would be solved ``without a fight'' and that the battle for the city was finished, Reuters Television's Nikolai Pavlov reported.
Dostum said he was also in contact with Taliban leaders in other parts of Afghanistan, including Kandahar -- the southern stronghold still held by the movement.
Kunduz is Taliban's last redoubt in northern Afghanistan after its rout over recent days by Alliance troops, backed by weeks of heavy U.S. bombing.
A total of 10,000 Afghan Taliban troops and Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters linked to the al Qaeda network of Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, were reported to be in the city.
U.S. raids on Kunduz were relatively light for a second day on Wednesday, with only two bombs being dropped.
Taliban defectors and Alliance troops said earlier that Afghan Taliban troops wanted to give up, but foreign al Qaeda fighters, with nowhere to run, had vowed to fight to the death and were executing Afghans who wanted to surrender.
The Alliance suspended its ground offensive against the city but said it would advance on Kunduz if the talks, which began in earnest on Sunday, failed.