- (AFP) - One of Poland's leading weeklies, Wprost, claims
to have interviewed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, in its latest
edition due out on Sunday.
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- In the interview, Omar asserts that there are
"40,000
well-equipped Taliban burning to fight in Afghanistan."
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- "We cut communications between Osama (bin Laden)
and his men with the outside world a bit too quickly, under pressure from
international organisations. He couldn't even call his family. It's
different
today," he said.
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- "We are arming our friends (bin Laden's al-Qaeda
network) to prepare them better for the jihad (holy war). The United States
can expect plenty of surprises."
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- According to Omar, the September 11 attacks on the United
States were "the work of India and Israel, two sworn enemies of Islam,
who wanted to demonstrate that all Muslims are terrorists."
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- "I can assure you the terrorists had no links either
with bin Laden or with any Islamic group," he said.
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- Jaroslaw Gizinski, the weekly's foreign editor, told
AFP the interview had been obtained "via a very complicated route,
thanks to intermediaries," but that he had "no doubt as to its
authenticity."
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- Reporter Henryk Suchar, an expert on Afghanistan, made
the interview by telephone last Friday. He spoke for 15 minutes from Warsaw
with "an intermediary who transmitted the questions and Omar's
replies."
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- Omar "did not take the telephone himself, so Wprost
does not have a tape of his voice," Gizinski said.
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- He said anti-Taliban opposition forces had facilitated
the contact. "Despite the military operations against their enemies,
the Taliban are still in contact with them by satellite telephone,"
he said.
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- Wprost is one of Poland's three leading weeklies.
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