KABUL, Afghanistan (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Amid political confusion, Afghanistan's Northern Alliance stamped its control on Kabul on Wednesday as defecting tribal leaders and relentless U.S. air raids pushed the hard-line Taliban into a shrinking corner.
The fundamentalist movement, engaged in a last stand against rebel tribal leaders at their power base in southern Kandahar, said their retreat from major cities was a tactical withdrawal aimed at sparing civilian lives that could have been lost in house-to-house fighting.
On day 39 of the U.S. bombing campaign to punish the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant remained free in the forbidding and inhospitable mountains of Afghanistan and U.S. special forces headed south in their hunt.
His protector, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, voiced defiance and called on his troops not to desert.
Both were safe, the Taliban said. ``They are in Afghanistan and there has been no harm to them,'' the private Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdullah as saying.
Asked whether the beleaguered Taliban were ready to strike a compromise with the United States on handing over bin Laden, he said: ``There is no change in our position on the issue of Osama.''
There was little clue if any to the shape of a new government.
Triumphant opposition Northern Alliance fighters walked the streets down which the Taliban fled a day earlier.