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Security Council Bin Laden May Stay in Afghanistan
By Kathy Gannon
Associated Press
November 2, 1999
Kabul - Osama bin Laden will likely remain in Afghanistan after the United States rejected an offer by the suspected terrorist to leave for a secret destination, a spokesman for the ruling Taliban militia said Tuesday.
The proposal to resolve the dispute was one of several that are apparently unacceptable to Washington, which is demanding bin Laden be handed over to the United States or a third country for trial on charges that he masterminded last year's twin bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
The United States has banned trade with or investment in the war-shattered Muslim country, which also faces U.N. sanctions if it does not deliver bin Laden by Nov. 14.
The Taliban, wanting to avoid sanctions and shed their pariah state status, have tried to open official lines of communication with Washington.
In Washington, a State Department official said Tuesday that the United States is willing to resume discussions, not negotiations, with the Taliban concerning U.N. sanctions. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also expressed regret over reports that the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has decided to abandon discussions with the United States.
In a satellite telephone interview from the Taliban headquarters in southern Kandahar, spokesman Tayyab Aga told The Associated Press that bin Laden will probably stay in Afghanistan, despite an offer to leave for a secret destination that he made in a letter to Omar last weekend.
"It is not acceptable to the United States government that Osama simply leave Afghanistan, so that's why we think that now he is not going to leave, because it will not benefit the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan or him," Aga said. Washington also rejected an offer by bin Laden to have his fate decided by a panel of Islamic clerics from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and a third Muslim country.
In addition, the Taliban have offered to continue restricting bin Laden's movements and place him under the supervision of both Taliban and international monitors. Omar, the Taliban leader, blamed Washington for the dispute. "Before, the United States said Afghanistan should get rid of bin Laden, and now Osama himself says he is ready to leave Afghanistan, but America says it is not enough,'' Omar said in a statement carried Tuesday on Taliban-run Radio Shariat. "It is unfair and shows that it is not Osama that America is afraid of, but it is Islam," he said.
The Taliban has imposed a strict version of Islam in the 90 percent of Afghanistan that it controls. The militia continues to wage a fierce war with ethnic and religious minority opposition fighters.
In an interview last weekend with The Associated Press, Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil said the militia wants negotiations with the United States. But he said that tradition, culture and the lack of an extradition treaty with the United States make it impossible simply to hand over bin Laden.
"He is a holy warrior," Aga said. "He is respected throughout Afghanistan."
In ramshackle bazaars and on streets that weave through neighborhoods ruined by war, people in this poor capital are angry at the United States. "Why is America beating us? What is Osama to me and to my children?" said Alima Jan, whose all-enveloping burqa was tossed back to reveal her face, lined with age and eyes watering with tears. "It is a calamity already in our country. Why are they doing this? Everyone is dying. We need help, but instead America beats us with sanctions," she said Tuesday.
At the ticketing office of Afghanistan's national airlines, Ariana, which won't be allowed to operate if U.N. sanctions take effect, workers - none of whom would give their names - criticized the United States. "If they want Osama that's fine, but they should find another way to solve their problem with the Taliban," one ticket agent said. "We are 1,600 workers and our families. Without this job we have nothing."
Hunted by the United States for his alleged role in the embassy bombings, which killed 224 people, bin Laden went underground after a U.S. missile attack on eastern Afghanistan in August. On Saturday, he was spotted in eastern Nangarhar province in a place called Farmada, a heavily forested area of hills and sunbaked mud homes.
Saying he could not be identified because he would be killed, a black-turbaned commander, his gray-flecked beard unkempt in Taliban tradition, said bin Laden arrived in a three-car convoy - a nondescript white jeep with one guard, a four-wheel vehicle and an armored truck.
"He met with the commander of the camp, spent some time with the trainees and left," he said. Bin Laden embraced the head of the camp and went among the men shaking hands, embracing some. On bin Laden's shoulder was a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. "Everyone knew it was him," the commander said. "He didn't stay long, maybe two hours and then he was gone."
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