Cox News Service
KABUL, Afghanistan — The battle for Kandahar, the last bastion of Taliban rule, intensified Friday, but talks on the future of Afghanistan suffered a setback when lingering political differences resurfaced among factions of the advancing Northern Alliance.
The U.N.-sponsored talks in Germany stalled when alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, speaking in the Afghan capital, publicly rejected the negotiating process aimed at creating a new power-sharing government in Kabul. On Thursday, Rabanni’s chief delegate in Germany had embraced the talks and supported its objectives.
Any decisions on Afghanistan’s future should be made at home and not in Germany, Rabbani added.
Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes relentlessly pounded Taliban positions in Afghanistan on Friday. Taliban leaders cornered in Kandahar began negotiating surrender terms with Afghan rebels surrounding the city, according to Pentagon officials in Washington, D.C.
But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld emphasized Friday that the United States would not allow Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to go free as part of a deal for surrendering Kandahar.
"I can assure you that the United States would oppose" any amnesty or safe passage for Omar, Rumsfeld told reporters at a Pentagon briefing, adding: "I think it is likely Omar is a dead-ender."
Taliban control of Afghanistan has steadily crumbled since President Bush ordered American military forces into action in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Bush administration believes they were plotted by Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.
The opposition Northern Alliance has taken control of most of Afghanistan since the U.S. bombing began Oct. 7, prompting several U.S. allies — Britain, France, Canada and Turkey among them — to ready troops for keeping the peace.
But the White House said Friday that conditions in Afghanistan are still too unsettled and dangerous for peacekeeping forces.
"There is still a war under way. There is still a mission to be achieved, and that is the destruction of (bin Laden’s) network," Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters.
Meanwhile, a force of U.S. Marines at an airstrip in a desolate stretch of Afghan desert grew to battalion strength Friday as several C-130 Hercules cargo planes deposited additional troops at the forward base near Kandahar.
Although Marine spokesmen did not give an exact number of Marine and Navy personnel there, a battalion in the U.S. Marines usually numbers around 1,200.
The mission of the Marines is to pressure Kandahar and to search for bin Laden and his lieutenants in their al-Qaida network.
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