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Date Posted: 08:10:02 01/03/02 Thu
Author: Reuters
Subject: The U.S. military is airlifting hundreds of paratroops

By Jonathan Lyons and Jeremy Page

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military is airlifting hundreds of paratroops into southern Afghanistan to join the hunt for leaders of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and his Taliban protectors.

As Washington's Afghan allies tried to negotiate the bloodless surrender of ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Pentagon said it was counting on Afghanistan's interim government to hand him over if he were taken.

In the United States itself, all eyes were on the first person indicted in connection with the September 11 suicide hijackings there as Zacarias Moussaoui appeared in court facing charges that could carry the death penalty.

"The U.S. forces in Afghanistan continue to be focused on what we have said are our primary objectives right now. That is to pursue and get the Taliban and the al Qaeda leadership," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said in Washington.

With its air campaign winding down, the U.S. military has been concentrating on ground operations, raiding suspected Taliban hideouts and questioning captured Taliban and al Qaeda fighters.

But the trail of bin Laden himself, accused by Washington of masterminding the September 11 attacks that killed almost 3,300 Americans and other nationals, appears to have gone cold in the mountainous expanse that divides Afghanistan from Pakistan.

Clarke said Wednesday that several hundred members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division had arrived at a military airfield in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south.

The paratroops, who will eventually total more than 1,000, would replace more than 1,000 Marines already there, she said.

U.S. officials said earlier the Marines would be diverted to other unspecified duties.

Clarke told reporters U.S. forces were now questioning 221 al Qaeda and Taliban "detainees" at facilities in Afghanistan and aboard the Navy warship Bataan in the northern Indian Ocean.

She spoke as Afghan officials negotiated with trapped Taliban fighters. "It's been made very clear that we expect to have control of him (Mullah Omar)," said Clarke.

"IT IS THEIR DECISION"

A spokesman for Haji Gullalai, intelligence chief in Kandahar, said envoys sent to negotiate the surrender of Mullah Omar had returned, and they hoped the talks would lead to his capture without bloodshed.

"We are still waiting to hear from them about our demands," the spokesman said. "Basically, we have told them clearly that we want the issue to be resolved without bloodshed and it is their decision how they want to respond."

Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric rarely seen in public and who lost one eye fighting the 1979-89 Soviet occupation, is believed to have taken refuge in the mountains around Baghran in southern Helmand province, some 160 km (100 miles) northwest of Kandahar.

He is thought to have up to 1,000 fighters defending him.

But it was not clear if he was under the control of local tribal chieftains who might be prepared to hand him over.

In the United States, Moussaoui, a 33-year-old French citizen of Moroccan descent, appeared in a court in Alexandria, Virginia, not far from the Pentagon that was badly damaged in the September 11 suicide attacks.

"In the name of Allah I do not have anything to plead. I enter no plea. Thank you very much," he told the court.

Moussaoui was charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, to commit aircraft piracy, to destroy aircraft, to use weapons of mass destruction, to murder U.S. government employees and to destroy property.

His lawyers entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf, and the judge ordered opening arguments to begin on October 14.

Moussaoui's mother headed back to France after issuing a public plea that her son's life be spared. She declined to visit her son after authorities said an FBI agent would be present.

As post-war Afghanistan struggles to rebuild, a team from 12 nations contributing to a British-led foreign security force in Kabul began surveying the shattered capital.

The 25-strong team from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Romania met British troops at the force's headquarters in a dilapidated former sports club in the center of the city.

Impoverished by more than 20 years of warfare, foreign invasion, anarchy and Taliban misrule, Afghanistan's New Year began on a bitter note, with charges that U.S. bombs had killed 107 civilians at a village near the town of Gardez.

The U.S. military rejected the accusation from local Afghans, saying its planes had destroyed a compound used by al Qaeda and the Taliban.

A U.S. intelligence official said the military believed its bombs had killed Taliban intelligence chief Qari Ahmadullah during the last week of December. "We think he's most likely dead," the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Earlier, The New York Times newspaper quoted Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai as saying he was worried about the mounting civilian casualties.

"We want to finish terrorists in Afghanistan -- we want to finish them completely ... But we must also make sure our civilians do not suffer," he told the paper.

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