The Northern Alliance was under mounting pressure yesterday to form a broad-based government in Afghanistan as the last two major pockets of Taliban resistance in the country were reported negotiating their surrender.
But international interest seemed to draw increasingly testy responses from the new masters of Kabul, flush from a series of military victories that saw a rapid crumbling of their Taliban foes' five-year hold on power.
The collapse of the Taliban as a political force was confirmed by Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, who said yesterday that Islamabad no longer recognizes the militia government, although it maintains diplomatic ties.
"We have not yet announced any de-recognition of the Taliban government but that does not mean that we continue to recognize it," he said, saying Islamabad "would be happy" to deal with future UN-sponsored administration.
"We do not recognize in the meantime a claim by any leader to represent the whole of Afghanistan," Sattar said.
Taliban fighters besieged in the northern city of Kunduz offered a conditional surrender and a peaceful transition of power was reportedly under negotiation in the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar.
The top Taliban commander in Kunduz, Mullah Fazil has offered to surrender -- but only under UN supervision.
"We have authorized the governor of the province to take necessary steps in this respect," Fazil said in an interview published yesterday in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.
He said the Taliban would under no circumstances surrender to the Northern Alliance after hearing reports of bloody reprisals after the fall of Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif.
Fazil said their conditions include safe passage home for the fighters, the right to hand their heavy weapons over to neutral caretakers and for foreign fighters -- including al-Qaeda troops -- to be repatriated through UN auspices.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell vowed that Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks that claimed more than 4,000 lives in the US, would be captured, but it was unclear how much help he was getting from the alliance.
The alliance's interior minister, Younis Qanooni, who announced Sunday that they had localized bin Laden at a base 130km east of Kandahar, was vague on whether the information was being relayed to Washington.
"We've been fighting Osama bin Laden and his terrorist al-Qaeda network for the past seven years. ... The United States has recently joined us in this campaign," Qanooni said. "We should ask whether the United States is going to cooperate with us in fighting international terrorism, not the other way around."
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