Afghan officials negotiate with tribal leaders

Associated Press WriterKANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah said Friday that deposed spiritual leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is surrounded near the city of Baghran in Afghanistan's central mountains.

Abdullah vowed to capture Omar and ensure he was put on trial, but did not elaborate on whether the troops surrounding the Taliban leader were Afghan or American. Afghan intelligence officials in Kandahar, south of Baghran, have said negotiations for his surrender are under way with tribal leaders.

U.S officials have said no deal had been offered to Omar, the United States' second most wanted man, after Osama bin Laden. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Washington -- and the Afghan government -- would oppose any deal allowing Omar to escape.

American warplanes bombed an al-Qaida base in eastern Afghanistan for the second straight day after followers of bin Laden's terror group were detected trying to regroup there, U.S. military officials said. The strikes on Zawar Kili camp near Khost came after activity was seen there soon after the first strikes Thursday, Pentagon spokewoman Victoria Clarke said.

Around 1,000 al-Qaida fighters have taken refuge around Khost in Paktia province, Afghan Deputy Intelligence Minister Abdullah Tawheedi said Friday. They have scattered in groups of 50-100, he said. "I think al-Qaida will be routed in one month," he said.

As the search for the remnants of al-Qaida and the Taliban continued, the United States closed the first major forward base it had set up on Afghan soil. Camp Rhino, in the deserts south of Kandahar, was returned to its original state -- a simple airstrip -- and turned over to Afghan government authorities, Marine spokesman Capt. Stewart Upton said.

Also, the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne is taking over a base at Kandahar Airport from the Marines, Upton said Friday. The handover suggests the area has been secured and the operations have moved into a new phase.

At the daily U.S. Marines briefing in Kandahar, Upton said the advance Army guard had arrived at the airport and the Marines of the 26th Marines Expeditionary Unit would be packing and returning to naval ships in the Arabian Sea. No specific time was given.

Abdullah told reporters in the capital, Kabul, that the sitation concerning Omar "will be made clear tomorrow or the day after." The foreign minister is the highest-ranking Afghan official to confirm Omar's location.

U.S. officials have said they doubt the fugitive Taliban leader is willing to surrender.

If Omar doesn't agree to surrender, the Baghran region in the mountains north of Kandahar where he is believed to be hiding faces possible bombing by U.S.-led warplanes, Afghan and Pakistani military officials said.

Kandahar's governor, Gul Agha, said Thursday his men were not negotiating with Omar but were continuing to search for him and to persuade tribal leaders to disarm.

Abdullah called Omar "a terrorist" and said he will be put on trial -- but whether in Aghanistan or by an international tribunal "will be decided when we capture him."

Nasrat Ullah, a secretary for Kandahar intelligence chief Haji Gulalai, said negotiations for Omar's surrender were "continuing" Friday. he said the village where Omar was located was surrounded, but he did not identify it.

Tawheedi said the whereabouts of bin Laden -- who was sheltered for years by Omar and like him has vanished since the Taliban's fall in late December -- was not known. There had been reports bin Laden had slipped into Pakistan, "but now we simply don't know. He could be back here or not."

In neighboring Pakistan, meanwhile, intelligence officials in Peshawar were questioning the Taliban's former ambassador in Islamabad, who was arrested Thursday, a senior official in the regional Home Ministry said on condition of anonymity.

It was not known why Abdul Salaam Zaeef had been arrested, but Pakistani Minister of Planning Haji Mohammad Muhaqeq branded Zaeef a criminal and a leader of the "Afghan al-Qaida" who "committed crimes against humanity, in the world and in Afghanistan" for his role in the Taliban.

Pakistan was once the Taliban's strongest ally -- until it joined the U.S. campaign against the hard-line Islamic militua -- and Zaeef had been the Taliban's most prominent spokesman.

Asked about talks over Omar, Rumsfeld said in Washington that the United States would not approve of any negotiations "which would result in freeing of people who ought not to be freed," including those involved in terrorism or harboring terrorists.

"I know that the interim government is right on the same sheet of music with us, with respect to this. They want the Taliban caught," Rumsfeld said Thursday.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency reported that the bombardment Thursday near Khost killed 32 people and was continuing Friday. It quoted witnesses as saying the bombing was so intense that residents had no chance to remove bodies. A tribal chief, Ghazi Nawaz Tani, asked for the airstrikes to end, claiming they were killing civilians.

The bombing reflected a U.S. concern that remnants of the al-Qaida network -- which the United States blames for the Sept. 11 terror attacks -- are trying to reorganize even as the search for bin Laden continues by air, land and sea.

Also Friday at the Kandahar airport, another 25 prisoners, most of them Afghans, arrived for eventual transfer to prisons outside of Afghanistan. About 250 prisoners are being jailed there. Upton said the facility was being expanded to hold up to 400.