- UNITED NATIONS (Reuters)
- The United Nations said on Tuesday it did not have the means to handle
the surrender of thousands of Taliban forces under siege in Kunduz and
urged the forces surrounding the key northern Afghan town to respect the
laws of war in dealing with them.
-
- U.N. officials said they had been formally contacted
in Islamabad late Monday by two individuals -- one of them a religious
leader -- who said Taliban commanders trapped inside Kunduz wanted to surrender
to the United Nations.
-
- But they said the world body had no forces on the ground
in Afghanistan and therefore could not agree to accept the surrendering
troops.
-
- ``It is evident that the United Nations has no means,
is not present on the ground, and simply cannot, unfortunately, accede
to this request,'' said Lakhdar Brahimi, Secretary-General Kofi Annan's
special representative for Afghanistan.
-
- He said he had asked his deputy, Francesc Vendrell, to
contact the Northern Alliance -- whose forces were surrounding Kunduz --
and urge it to respect international humanitarian and human rights laws
and ``treat this situation with as much humanity as possible.''
-
- Vendrell is in the Afghan capital Kabul, occupied by
Northern Alliance troops since the Taliban regime abandoned the city last
week.
-
- ANNAN 'ACUTELY CONCERNED'
-
- Annan's spokesman said the U.N. leader was ``acutely
concerned'' about the safety and well-being of combatants who had either
surrendered or wished to do so in accordance with international law.
-
- ``The secretary-general strongly appeals to all parties
to respect the Geneva Conventions and comply with international humanitarian
and human rights law,'' spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
-
- More than 10,000 Taliban fighters, pinned into the Taliban's
last remaining redoubt apart from their southern stronghold of Kandahar,
have been seeking safe passage out of Kunduz under the umbrella of the
United Nations.
-
- The ancient town guards routes into the Central Asian
republic of Tajikistan to the north.
-
- Northern Alliance guns trained on Taliban front lines
outside the town were silent for a second straight day on Tuesday, Alliance
General Abdul Rashid Dostum told Reuters.
-
- Dostum said he was expecting the arrival of two Taliban
commanders to discuss safe passage for their fighters. He said the plan
was to grant an amnesty to local Taliban troops who gave themselves up
to Northern Alliance forces.
-
- But foreign fighters battling alongside them -- including
Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens -- would not get the same treatment, the
ethnic Uzbek general added.
-
- ``We will deal with the foreigners according to international
laws and human rights conventions,'' he said.
-
- In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said
he opposed any deal that would let Kunduz's defenders escape.
-
- ``Any idea that those people ... should end up in some
sort of a negotiation which would allow them to leave the country and go
off and destabilize other countries and engage in terrorist attacks on
the United States is something that I would certainly do everything I could
to prevent,'' he said.
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