Kunduz pounded amid surrender talks

US bombers pounded the city of Kunduz again today. The attack came as Taliban commanders were reported to have offered to surrender if their foreign comrades from the Middle East, Chechnya and Pakistan were given safe passage.

Commander Dadullah, former chief of Taliban forces in Mazar-i-Sharif, which fell to the Northern Alliance 10 days ago, presented the proposal, according to the Afghan news agency.

The Northern Alliance earlier offered the chance of surrender to the Taliban inside Kunduz, but not to the al Qaeda hardliners fighting alongside them. With the rout of the Taliban almost complete, hard-core elements from al Qaeda remain in Kunduz.

They are also hemmed in at positions overlooking Bagram airport north of Kabul, in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and in the White Mountains, between Jalalabad and the border with Pakistan.

There have been widespread reports of Afghan Taliban being shot by their own side while trying to surrender.

More than 100 were machinegunned in the back near Kunduz when they tried to walk across to Northern Alliance positions, according to local commanders.

Haji Abdul Qadeer, the new Pashtun governor of Jalalabad, said of the al Qaeda members: "These people, they're name is death, and they will fight to the last man. The Arabs and the extremists with them will never give up. It will be a hard fight to get them out and it will take more than we have got. We need support from the US and Britain with ammunition and air power to take on the Arabs in the White Mountains."

But while Qadeer talked of " hunting down the terrorists", his position is far from secure. There have been tense negotiations in the Jalalabad palace of former king Zahir Shah.

Ferocious tribesmen armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades line the corridors, eyeing each other with suspicion.

Behind closed doors in rooms decorated with inlaid marble, gilt, and elaborate tiles, their leaders were working for the fifth consecutive day trying to knit the rivalries of local warlords into an administration under Qadeer.

It should have been easy - in Jalalabad the militias all come from the same Pashtun tribe and are united in their hatred of the Taliban. And in Qadeer they have a man whose credentials, after six years of combat alongside the Northern Alliance, are strong.

But they are bickering over the distribution of the top jobs.

Qadeer, who was governor of Jalalabad until he fled the Taliban in 1996 (many Afghans believe he left after a handsome pay-off from Pakistani intelligence who were backing the Islamic fundamentalists), admitted that if talks broke down, fighting could follow. "It's been very tense, and I'm exhausted. But we'll get through this, we have to," he said.

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