Bin Laden To Fight To Death

KABUL, Thursday - Osama bin Laden has vowed to die rather than be handed over to the US, a Taliban official said on Thursday as US forces stepped up the hunt for the world’s most wanted man in Afghanistan. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld highlighted fears that bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, would try to flee the country as Taliban forces are forced to retreat. And Pakistan has tightened its watch on the Afghan border in case the multi-millionaire creator of the al-Qaeda network tries to find a new hiding place outside of Afghanistan. But Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdullah said, “America can never arrest Osama bin Laden alive,” the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported. “Osama has decided that death is better than being handed over to the Americans. He prefers death,” said the spokesman. Abdullah dismissed rumours he said came from America that bin Laden has been arrested. “This morning at 9:00am I contacted my headquarters in Kandahar and there is no report about Osama bin Laden, and they strongly denied this rumour.” Pakistan has ordered an “Osama” alert on its border. “The government is aware of all possibilities and is taking all possibilities into account,” a top government official who requested anonymity, told AFP. “Civil armed forces on the western borders in North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan borders have been put on red alert against any threat” of bin Laden getting into Pakistan, said the official. Special US forces are operating in southern Afghanistan hunting al-Qaeda targets. And Rumsfeld said in an interview released Thursday that he thought bin Laden may try to outmanoeuvre his US pursuers. He told the New York Times: “My guess is what he’d probably do is take a helicopter down one of those valleys that we couldn’t pick up and pop over to some part of the country where there is an airfield and have a plane waiting for him.” Rumsfeld added: “We’re actively trying to make it hard for him to do anything. And we spend a lot of time looking for the leadership cells of al-Qaeda and Taliban, and when we find them we try to destroy them.” The Taliban have said that bin Laden is a “guest” and vowed never to hand him over to the US, which started air strikes against Taliban targets on October 7. Pressure on the Taliban is mounting with opposition forces now attacking its stronghold city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. The city is the headquarters of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. Ends