Taliban Give Terms For Surrendering

ISLAMABAD, Monday – Besieged Taliban fighters are willing to surrender the northern Afghanistan city of Kunduz, but only under UN supervision, a militia commander said in an interview published yesterday. The commander, Mulla Fazil, told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn the offer was prompted by the constant US bombings which he said had killed some 800 people over the weekend in the Kunduz area and 250 in nearby Khanabad district. “We have authorised the governor of the province to take necessary steps in this respect,” Fazil, described as the chief Taliban commander in the north, told the newspaper. But Fazil said the Taliban would under not surrender to the rival Northern Alliance after hearing reports of a bloody settling of accounts in the capital Kabul and northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. “We don’t trust them,” Dawn quoted Fazil as saying late Sunday by satellite phone from Kunduz. He said the troops would give themselves up only to a neutral authority supervised by the UN. Thousands of Taliban troops backed by Chechen, Arab and Pakistani loyalists were making a stand at Kunduz. AFP Ends