Tribal fighters said to capture 80 Taliban

Associated Press WriterKABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Tribal fighters said they captured 80 Taliban soldiers Friday near the airport at Kandahar as anti-Taliban forces closed in on the Islamic militia stronghold. U.S. warplanes bombed Taliban defenses near the airport.

In Germany, U.N.-sponsored talks that had been gaining momentum suffered a setback when an Afghan leader from the largest ethnic group walked out to protest a lack of Pashtun representation.

The Taliban soldiers near Kandahar's airport surrendered without resistance when tribal fighters surrounded them Friday morning and ordered them to drop their weapons, tribal leader Abdul Jabbar said.

Jabbar, speaking in Pakistan, said the fighters also seized five Taliban tanks, four pickup trucks, one anti-aircraft gun and a multi-barreled rocket launcher.

Taxi and bus drivers arriving in Kabul from Kandahar on Friday reported fighting Thursday in the two-mile area between the airport and Kandahar itself.

"That area is a no-man's land," said Pacha, a taxi driver. "There is fighting. We can't go there. ... We don't know who it is."

Another tribal leader, Mohammed Anwar, reported airstrikes from the U.S.-led coalition Friday on positions around the Kandahar airport.

The Taliban have barred journalists from Kandahar, 280 miles southwest of Kabul, and the reports of fighting could not be independently verified.

The northern alliance's deputy defense minister, Bismillah Khan, said Thursday that anti-Taliban forces had reached the eastern outskirts of Kandahar and that "there is heavy fighting going on." Speaking in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Khan said his information was based on radio communications with his commanders.

Khan's spokesman, Waisuddin Salik, said Friday that the battles continued. "Outside the city is fighting," he said, adding he didn't have a specific location.

Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said he could not confirm or deny that anti-Taliban fighters had entered Kandahar. He described the city as "relatively surrounded by opposition groups."

The Taliban's supreme leader ordered his followers to fight to the death to defend the city. Residents have reported Taliban fighters digging in around Kandahar in recent days.

"The fight has now begun," Mullah Mohammed Omar said in a message to commanders. "It is the best opportunity to achieve martyrdom."

Anwar also said 300 pro-Taliban Arab fighters were moving toward Takhta Pull, a village on the road out of Kandahar that tribal forces said they seized last weekend.

Both the northern alliance and tribal groups from southern Afghanistan have been fighting the Taliban, who are mostly from the Pashtun ethnic group predominant in the south. Although they share a common enemy, many Pashtun tribal leaders and fighters dislike the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras of the northern alliance.

Those tensions flared in Bonn, Germany, where Afghan factions were meeting to work out a mechanism to create a new government for their war-ravaged nation.

It had appeared strong progress was being made Thursday when the northern alliance said it would not block the deployment of foreign peacekeepers, and the four factions at the talks moved closer to a formula for the shape of an interim administration.

But Abdul Qadir, the governor of the Pashtun province of Nangarhar, skipped the latest two meetings on Thursday and Friday to protest the lack of Pashtun representation at the talks, said his spokesman, Bahadori, who goes by one name.

Bahadori played down the significance of Qadir's move, saying he was still in Germany and was expected to return to the talks.

Mullah Omar's defiant call for Taliban to fight to the death in Kandahar echoed similar vows made when fighting raged in cities further north. In those cases, the Taliban retreated rather than making a last stand. But Kandahar is the birthplace of the Taliban movement that seized power over Afghanistan in 1996 -- and the only city it still holds.

Reports indicated defections had begun in Kandahar. In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said credible reports indicated Taliban intelligence chief Qari Amadullah had defected to the northern alliance. A defense official in Washington, however, said Amadullah was still negotiating his surrender from Kandahar.

If Amadullah defects, he might reveal precise information as to the whereabouts of Omar and bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Stufflebeem said he could not confirm a possible defection by Amadullah, but said the Taliban appeared to be "fractured."

"There are some commanders who are negotiating for surrender of their forces," though others might follow Omar's call, he said.

More than 1,000 U.S. Marines have set up base in the desert about 70 miles west of Kandahar, and forces of the U.S.-led coalition are supporting anti-Taliban fighters with airstrikes.

In neighboring Uzbekistan, where about 1,000 members of the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division are stationed, U.S. officials said a soldier was killed by a gunshot. They said his death was not the result of enemy action, but released no other details.

President Bush launched military operations against the Taliban regime on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden. Taliban rule has since fallen in most of the country, and they now control only four of 30 Afghan provinces.