But Karzai played down the incident.
"It's OK. There was a misunderstanding," he said. "I hope everything will be fine. Gul Agha is a good Afghan."
Rumsfeld too has made it clear any deal that enables Omar or other senior Taliban leaders to walk free would be unacceptable.
Taliban officials also confirmed the surrender of neighboring Helmand and Zabul provinces, and tribal officials said they seized the strategic town of Spin Boldak on the Pakistan border, the scene of heavy fighting in past weeks.
"Around 500 Taliban soldiers in Spin Boldak fled the town ... and they took all their weapons and vehicles with them," said a spokesman for tribal commander Wakil Abdul Samad Khan.
"Early this morning our forces ... moved into Spin Boldak and they have taken control of the city," he said by telephone from the town. "There is calm and no fighting."
The AIP news agency reported that Afghan tribal fighters captured a key hill in their bid to flush out al-Qaeda fighters holed up in caves in the Tora Bora region.
Anti-Taliban fighters seized the Zir Sar hill overnight as their forces moved up toward the Melawa hills, where the al-Qaeda troops are now believed to be concentrated, AIP said.
A spokesman for commander Haji Zaman, who is leading the tribal fighters in the battle for Tora Bora, said fighting was still going on.
"Fighting is raging in the difficult terrain and we are hopeful that our forces will capture the entire area," spokesman Shakarullah said in Peshawar.
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