Anti-aircraft guns fired on two planes over Kabul yesterday, as Afghanistan's isolated Taliban rulers braced for a US military strike and offered to free eight foreign Christian aid workers.
Pakistan, the last country with diplomatic ties to Kabul, said it would cut off talks with the Taliban, further isolating the Islamic fundamentalists who have sheltered Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of last month's attacks on America.
PHOTO: REUTERS
But in an apparent softening of their stance, the Taliban said it could free the eight foreign aid workers held since August, while British reporter Yvonne Ridley, detained a week ago for illegally entering the country, would be released.
In Kabul yesterday, anti-aircraft batteries opened fire on at least one plane flying high above the war-shattered capital.
One eyewitness said the 15 minutes of firing was intense and appeared to be directed at two planes flying high over the city. One of the aircraft made off at high speed, but the second could be seen circling in the clear skies.
One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the plane was an unmanned aircraft used for reconnaissance. Al-Jazeera satellite television pictures showed at least one surface-to-air missile fired at the plane.
Meanwhile, diplomatic pressure on Afghanistan gathered pace.
"We cannot allow these people to carry on doing what they have done on Sept. 11," said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrapping up a whirlwind tour aimed at bolstering support for the US war on terrorism, from New Delhi.
"So we will continue the action until it's effective, until it achieves the objective that we have set out," he said.
The Taliban, meanwhile, decried Washington's plans to parachute food aid to the country's drought-stricken people as a ploy to deluge ordinary Afghans with propaganda and defuse their anger, saying its roads were open for caravans of assistance.
"There is no doubt that the real objective of such propaganda by the United States is to defuse the anger of the Afghan people against it," the Foreign Ministry statement said.
"With such tactics, it wants to tell the Afghan people that it does not have any enmity against the Afghans," it said.
The US said on Thursday it was considering all options, including parachuting food rations by military aircraft, to double the amount of US food aid reaching displaced Afghan refugees threatened by drought and war.
Washington has already launched a high-resolution spy satellite to monitor Afghanistan. It has also sent troops to Uzbekistan, the country's northern neighbor, and won permission from nearby Georgia to use its bases for air strikes.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan, announcing that Islamabad would send no further delegations or envoys to Afghanistan to try to persuade them to hand over bin Laden, said: "If they decide to respond to what the international community wants ... it is to their advantage to do so."
In Kabul, the Taliban said it could free the aid workers if Washington halted its threats against the country, the Afghan Islamic Press said, quoting a Foreign Ministry statement.
The aid workers, all with the German-based Shelter Now International relief agency, were arrested on charges of spreading Christianity -- accusations they have denied.
In another apparent conciliatory gesture, Afghan media reported that Mullah Mohammad Omar had ordered the immediate release of Ridley, a reporter for the London-based Sunday Express.
The diplomatic and military preparations fueled speculation that the next act in the crisis was nearing as US President George W. Bush assembled the biggest deployment of US forces since the 1991 Gulf War.
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