UNITED NATIONS (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it did not have the means to handle the surrender of thousands of Taliban forces under siege in Kunduz and urged the forces surrounding the key northern Afghan town to respect the laws of war in dealing with them.U.N. officials said they had been formally contacted in Islamabad late Monday by two individuals -- one of them a religious leader -- who said Taliban commanders trapped inside Kunduz wanted to surrender to the United Nations.
But they said the world body had no forces on the ground in Afghanistan and therefore could not agree to accept the surrendering troops.
``It is evident that the United Nations has no means, is not present on the ground, and simply cannot, unfortunately, accede to this request,'' said Lakhdar Brahimi, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative for Afghanistan.
He said he had asked his deputy, Francesc Vendrell, to contact the Northern Alliance -- whose forces were surrounding Kunduz -- and urge it to respect international humanitarian and human rights laws and ``treat this situation with as much humanity as possible.''
Vendrell is in the Afghan capital Kabul, occupied by Northern Alliance troops since the Taliban regime abandoned the city last week.
UN 'ACUTELY CONCERNED'
Annan's spokesman said the U.N. leader was ``acutely concerned'' about the safety and well-being of combatants who had either surrendered or wished to do so in accordance with international law.
More than 10,000 Taliban fighters, pinned into the Taliban's last remaining redoubt apart from their southern stronghold of Kandahar, have been seeking safe passage out of Kunduz under the umbrella of the United Nations.
The ancient town guards routes into the Central Asian republic of Tajikistan to the north.
Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum said he was expecting the arrival of two Taliban commanders to discuss safe passage for their fighters. He said the plan was to grant an amnesty to local Taliban troops who gave themselves up to Northern Alliance forces.
But foreign fighters battling alongside them -- including Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens -- would not get the same treatment, the ethnic Uzbek general added.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he opposed any deal that would let Kunduz's defenders escape.
``Any idea that those people ... should end up in some sort of a negotiation which would allow them to leave the country and go off and destabilize other countries and engage in terrorist attacks on the United States is something that I would certainly do everything I could to prevent,'' he said.