US, Allies Prepare Push To Capture Mullah Omar

KABUL, Tuesday - US and Afghan forces were preparing a massive push Tuesday to capture Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, Afghan officials said, as more peacekeepers headed toward Kabul to shore up Afghanistan’s fledgling government.Omar, on the run since the fall of the southern city of Kandahar on December 7, has reportedly established a new base in Baghran in the remote mountains to the northwest where he is guarded by supporters and al-Qaeda loyalists. The US military has declined to confirm US media reports that some 200 US Marines had already joined the hunt for Omar, but local Afghan intelligence chief Haju Gulali said a major operation involving marines was in the offing.Since the collapse of the Taliban regime, both suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, who has been blamed for the September 11 attacks on US cities, and Omar have fled their former Afghan strongholds and gone into hiding.And more than two months after US President George W. Bush launched his war on terrorism, an Iranian conservative party leader, Habibollah Asgaroladi, said Washington had picked Iraq as the next target and was preparing an “all-out attack.” “According to the reports we have received, the Americans are preparing themselves for launching an all-out attack on Iraq,” Asgaroladi was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA in Tehran. In Kabul, preparations began in earnest for the arrival of a 4,500-strong peacekeeping force, which will operate under the command of Britain’s Maj. Gen. John McColl, while elsewhere the hunt for bin Laden yielded nothing.AFPEnds