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http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20020102/wl/afghanistan_122.html Pentagon Doubts Omar Will Surrender Photos AP Photo Audio/Video Marines Return to Kandahar After Mission (AP) Four Suspected Taliban Fighters Captured After Gun Battle (AP) : Are U.S. Operations Looking for Just bin Laden and Omar? - (Yahoo! Finance Vision) By LOURDES NAVARRO, Associated Press Writer KABUL, Afghanistan (news - web sites) (AP) - American bombs killed the Taliban's intelligence chief, the new Afghan government confirmed Wednesday, and a tribal commander reported that negotiations were under way for the surrender of the ousted Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. In Washington, Pentagon (news - web sites) officials said they doubted Omar was seeking to surrender. Some 1,000 to 1,500 Taliban fighters holding out near Baghran are trying to ``negotiate themselves out of a predicament,'' spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters. ``But I think it's a leap of faith if we believe that that is on the behalf of Mullah Omar himself.'' The United States had identified the intelligence chief, Qari Ahmadullah, as one of the Taliban leaders it was hunting. He was believed to be the highest-ranking Taliban official killed in the American-led campaign in Afghanistan. Ahmadullah, 40, was killed by U.S. bombings of Naka, in Paktia province, said Abdullah Tawheedi, a deputy intelligence minister for the interim government in Kabul. He was among 25 people killed in Naka on Dec. 27, when U.S. planes attacked a house where he was staying, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported. According to Raz Mohammed Khan Lunai, Tawheedi's representative in neighboring Ghazni province, Ahmadullah was hit by airstrikes while trying to flee on a motorcycle. Lunai said he witnessed Ahmadullah's Dec. 31 burial in a remote and sparsely populated area of Ghazni. In southern Afghanistan, a commander said military leaders have been negotiating with tribal elders from the Baghran region believed to be sheltering Mullah Omar. Jamal Khan, a commander for Haji Gulalai, intelligence chief in the southern city of Kandahar, told The Associated Press that negotiations have been held since Monday for the surrender of Omar, the second-most wanted man on the U.S. list of terrorist fugitives after Osama bin Laden (news - web sites). Bin Laden is the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Also Wednesday, the U.S. commander of the Joint Special Operations Task Force said bin Laden isn't likely to be found in the caves in the Tora Bora area of eastern Afghanistan. ``I don't think he's up there,'' Col. John Mulholland told reporters at a U.S. special forces forward operating base outside Afghanistan. ``I do think he's either dead, buried under some tonnage of rock or he's out of there.'' Other U.S. commanders said American military teams are still searching the Tora Bora caves for anything that might help dismantle bin Laden's al-Qaida network or locate bin Laden. Other anti-Taliban officials in Kandahar, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, told AP the tribal leaders had been given ``a clear message'' to turn over Omar or face airstrikes from U.S.-led forces. For the past few days, U.S. planes have dropped leaflets warning villagers not to shelter Taliban or al-Qaida members, residents said. Omar has been in hiding since the fall of Kandahar, the last main Taliban stronghold, a month ago. Baghran, a mountainous region north of the U.S. Marine base at Kandahar airport, is in the same general area where Marines and anti-Taliban soldiers launched a major military operation. Marines in full combat gear were dispatched in convoys and helicopters from the Kandahar base late Monday. Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah, who uses only one name, said his government did not know where Omar was. ``I think Mullah Omar is still hiding somewhere in Afghanistan. His whereabouts is not known neither to us nor to the coalition, I gather,'' he told ABC-TV's ``Good Morning America. ``But sooner or later he will be captured.'' In other developments: -A coalition of groups began a three-month, $8 million immunization program to vaccinate 9 million Afghan children against measles. The program is being carried out by the Ministry of Public Health, the U.N. Children's Fund, the World Health Organization (news - web sites) and other non-governmental organizations. -The U.S. Central Command confirmed that Marines searched a former Taliban and al-Qaida compound in southern Afghanistan's Helmand province on Tuesday. -Six major Islamic parties in Pakistan - including three pro-Taliban groups that organized protests against the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan - announced a new alliance aimed at winning more political offices. -The State Department said more than 115,000 tons of food, most of it from the United States, arrived in Afghanistan in December, enough to feed 6 million displaced Afghans for two months. Meanwhile, a 12-nation advance team for Afghanistan's international peacekeeping force arrived in Kabul late Tuesday to assess logistics for a full-scale arrival of foreign troops later this month. The first French soldiers to join the peacekeeping force reached Kabul on Wednesday, the French military said. Around 70 troops should be in place by the end of the week, and by January the French contingent should total around 500. Turkey said it has volunteered to assume command of the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan when Britain's mandate expires in three months. A decision is pending. The peacekeeping force, expected to number up to 5,000, are tasked to keep security under the interim government led by Hamid Karzai, which is to run the country for six months. The logistics team that arrived Wednesday is made up of representatives from Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Norway, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands, said British Col. Richard Barrens, chief of staff at the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force. British military leaders and Afghan leaders will hold meetings in the next few says to assess where to deploy troops outside the capital, said Guy Richardson, a spokesman for British security forces. The officials will take trips outside Kabul to examine locations, he said. Several main roads are considered unsafe to travel because of armed bandits, and sporadic fights with pockets of al-Qaida fighters have been reported. http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/02/gen.war.against.terror/index.html Pentagon: al Qaeda regrouping in Afghanistan January 2, 2002 Posted: 8:09 p.m. EST (0109 GMT) U.S. Marines at the Kandahar International Airport carry 25mm ammunition. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- (CNN) -- Some members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network may be regrouping in Afghanistan and forming smaller groups that could resurface later, a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday. "We believe those dangerous groups are still in Afghanistan," Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told a Pentagon news briefing. Stufflebeem said many other al Qaeda fighters, who were targeted by U.S. airstrikes and flushed from the mountainous Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, probably fled into Pakistan. Anti-Taliban forces are trying to negotiate the surrender about 1,500 heavily armed Taliban fighters, who fled Kandahar before the city fell last month. The group has taken up positions about 120 miles northwest of Kandahar, near Baghran in Helmand Province. There are reports that the group may be sheltering Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and possibly bin Laden, but Stufflebeem said there was no conclusive evidence that the men are together. "The reports are all over the map. And so there is not a preponderance of reports that would allow us to pinpoint a location, because if we had that, well, we'd have them," Stufflebeem said. Stufflebeem said U.S. Special Forces are aiding anti-Taliban troops in the search for Taliban and al Qaeda leadership as well as continuing to provide intelligence and targeting assistance for possible U.S. airstrikes. (Full story) Meanwhile, a federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, entered a not guilty plea Wednesday for the first person indicted in connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui, 33, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent, declined to enter a plea at his arraignment on six conspiracy charges. Prosecutors have until March 29 to decide if they will seek the death penalty on four of the charges. The judge set a trial date for mid-October. A court clerk said the trial will begin October 15. (Full story) Latest developments • The United States estimates Pakistan has withdrawn half of the 6,000 to 8,000 troops it had along its border with Afghanistan and has sent them to the Kashmir border, where it is building up forces in response to increased tensions with India. U.S. military officials say there are concerned about the withdrawal, worried it will make the border even more porous for fleeing Taliban fighters. • The FBI and an official at a Minnesota flight school discussed the possibility that terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui might have been planning to use a plane as a flying bomb -- a discussion that took place before the September 11 terrorist attacks, a government official said Wednesday. The official said that at the time, there was no indication that a broader plot was being planned. • An Afghan government official and U.S. intelligence sources reported Wednesday that the head of the Taliban's intelligence service was killed in a recent U.S. bombing raid. Qari Ahmadullah was in the home of another Taliban commander in Afghanistan's Khost province when U.S. bombs hit the residence. (Full story) • The first contingent of French troops has joined the international peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan. The group of 15 soldiers arrived on Wednesday at Bagram Air Base, the French Embassy in Kabul told CNN. (Full story) • The Pentagon said Wednesday that U.S. forces have 221 al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. Two-hundred are under U.S. Marine guard at the Kandahar airport. Eight others, including American Taliban fighter John Walker, are being held aboard the USS Bataan in the Arabian Sea. • The massive anthrax cleanup of the Hart Senate office building is nearing completion but it is unclear when the building will reopen, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's on-scene coordinator. Investigators won't know if the latest fumigation worked until tests are completed on about 400 strips that were removed from the building Monday. 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