Taliban leader's fate key to surrender

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Among the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar's word was always law. Now, as the purist Islamic movement collapses, its leaders are desperately trying to salvage safety for the bearded, one-eyed cleric who led them to rule -- and to ruin.

Cornered in their last military stronghold of Kandahar, the southern Afghanistan city that is also their spiritual home, the Taliban are offering to lay down their weapons -- but at a price.

Under the still-murky terms of a surrender accord announced Thursday by the Taliban and tribal leaders opposing them, Omar's safety would be guaranteed. The leader of Afghanistan's incoming interim government, Hamid Karzai, said it still hadn't been decided whether the Taliban leader would be arrested, as the United States demands.

Unacceptable to Bush

President Bush quickly let it be known he wouldn't countenance any deal that left Omar -- who refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks -- at liberty.

"The president believes very strongly that those who harbor terrorists must be brought to justice," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Asked whether Bush believed that category included Omar, he replied: "Yes."

In seeking to strike a deal, the Taliban have very little leverage. Kandahar has been under intense American bombardment for nearly two months, and a contingent of more than 1,000 U.S. Marines is backing up anti-Taliban tribal forces who have been advancing on the city.

Even so, the Pashtun tribesmen closing in on Kandahar have little desire for a battle to the death with the Taliban, their ethnic kin. And the surrender pact tests the prestige of Karzai, picked only a day earlier by Afghan factions as head of an administration that will govern for six months while a new post-Taliban order is forged.

Throughout the confrontation over bin Laden, Omar has been a highly visible yet profoundly enigmatic figure.

Call for martyrdom

From his customary seclusion in Kandahar -- where his young disciples coalesced to form the Taliban movement -- the 41-year-old cleric issued pronouncements that were sometimes contradictory and confusing, but never strayed from an essential message: The Taliban would not yield.

Earlier this month, he described the struggle for Kandahar as an opportunity for martyrdom -- one that he urged his fighters to seize.

Karzai said as part of any deal to save himself, Omar would have to renounce terrorism. The United States replied, in essence, that such a renunciation would be too little, too late.

The Taliban, unsurprisingly, portrayed the offer to surrender Kandahar as a self-sacrificing move on Omar's part.

"Mullah Omar has taken the decision for the welfare of the people, to avoid casualties and to save the life and dignity of Afghans," the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said in the Pakistani capital.