U.N. gives Taliban an ultimatum

By Edith Lederer

Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council said Tuesday it had one message for Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers: Hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden and close all terrorist training camps "immediately and unconditionally."

The 15-nation council, whose permanent members are the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France, issued a statement after a briefing on the political, military and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, "including the dire consequences of Taliban rule for the Afghan people."

"There is one and only one message the Security Council has for the Taliban: Implement United Nations Security Council resolutions … immediately and unconditionally," said the statement, read by France’s U.N. ambassador, Jean-David Levitte, the current council president.

The council referred to a resolution it adopted last December demanding the Taliban turn over bin Laden to the United States or a third country for trial in the deadly bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998.

That resolution also demanded that the Taliban stop providing sanctuary and training for international terrorists, take measures to ensure that its territory is not used to prepare terrorist acts, and move swiftly to close all terrorist training camps.

Pakistan sent a high-level delegation on Monday to tell the Taliban to either hand over bin Laden or face a punishing assault from the United States, which has named the Saudi-born millionaire as the prime suspect in last week’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, turned the decision over to a council of Islamic clerics, which was gathering in the Afghan capital of Kabul and was expected to discuss the ultimatum today, and perhaps later into the week.

The Security Council froze Taliban assets and imposed an international flight ban on Afghanistan’s Ariana airlines in November 1999 to pressure the hard-line Islamic militia to turn over bin Laden. It added an arms embargo on the Taliban in January.

Earlier Tuesday, Afghanistan’s U.N. ambassador, Ravan Farhadi, who represents the ousted government of Burhanuddin Rabbani, offered 15,000 fighters for any operation against bin Laden or the Taliban.

The United States has not asked for assistance from the anti-Taliban forces, which control about 5 percent of the country in the north.

"We have 15,000 people ready to fight. They are trained to fight the Taliban," Farhadi told a news conference.

Farhadi also claimed that Pakistan’s military intelligence knew where bin Laden was hiding, since it had trained and worked with the Taliban.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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