Speaking of "Fatwa"
- Taliban: Bin Laden Edict Probably Delivered
Thursday September 27 4:17 PM ET
Taliban: Bin Laden Edict Probably Delivered
KABUL (Reuters) - A senior member of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said Thursday he believed an edict asking Osama bin Laden to leave the country had been delivered to the world's most wanted man, but no reply had been received.
``The message had to be sent through a messenger who probably took some time to find him,'' Information Minister Qudrutullah Jamal told Reuters.
``It's not like we can pick up the phone and talk to Osama, or fax a message to him. He has no such facilities, so the message had to be sent through a messenger who probably took some time to find him,'' Jamal said.
``We believe that by now he has found Osama and delivered the fatwa (edict) to him,'' he said, adding that bin Laden was still in Afghanistan.
A meeting of 1,000 of Afghanistan's leading clerics on Sept. 20 issued an edict urging bin Laden -- wanted by the United States as the suspected mastermind of this month's devastating suicide plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon -- to leave the country in his own time.
The Taliban had earlier reported that bin Laden was missing and officials of the puritanical movement that rules Afghanistan by strict Islamic tenets said they were trying to deliver the fatwa, or edict, passed by the clerics.
Asked about bin Laden's reply to the order to leave in his own time, Jamal said no response had yet arrived. ``We don't know yet because the messenger hasn't returned.''
Mullah Jamal was speaking hours after a confusing diplomatic development in which the Taliban's spiritual leader was quoted as saying he had accepted an offer to mediate in the Afghan crisis from U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.
A Pakistan-based Afghan news service quoted the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, as saying Omar would allow his government's officials to cooperate with Jackson and hold talks with them on the present crisis.
Jackson said Wednesday he was considering an invitation from a Taliban representative to discuss U.S. pressure to surrender bin Laden.
A more realistic initiative was being mounted by a group of Pakistani Muslim clerics who planned to fly to Omar's stronghold in the southern city of Kandahar Friday for goodwill talks, Pakistan state radio said.
MULLAH OMAR WARNING
Mullah Omar, meanwhile, warned Thursday that any Afghan helping an attack against the Taliban would suffer the same fate meted out to those who aided the Soviet invaders in the 1980s.
He was speaking exactly five years after Taliban fighters hanged the former Soviet-installed president Najibullah from a traffic post.
The 1996 date -- the capture of Kabul -- is seen as the anniversary of the Taliban seizing power although they never won international recognition and still have no control over pockets of the country held by the opposition Northern Alliance.
``Those Afghans who want to take over power in Afghanistan with the help of the American troops are the same as those Afghans who came into Afghanistan with the help of the Russian troops,'' Mullah Omar said in a statement, referring to the Soviet invasion of 1979.
``In case of intervention into Afghanistan, no difference will be made between America and Russia and those Afghans who are brought in by the Americans will be treated like those who were brought in by the communists,'' he said.
Under threat of imminent attack from the United States, the normally reclusive Mullah Omar has been particularly vocal recently, suggesting his grip on the Taliban may not be as secure as it once was.
Wednesday, he ordered all Afghans to return to their homes after the United Nations reported millions of people on the move -- either attempting to flee the country or at least the cities for the safety of the countryside.
There was little sign of the Taliban anniversary being marked in Kabul Thursday, although a day earlier saw a frenzied attack on one of the last U.S. symbols in the Afghan capital.
EMBASSY STORMED
The storming of the U.S. embassy by thousands of Taliban supporters, who set fire to parts of the building deserted more than 12 years ago, gave the United States a taste of the hostility it faces if it tries to unseat the Taliban.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the attack showed the Taliban's inability to grasp its international obligations.
Within hours of the assault, Mullah Omar told his people he saw less likelihood of an attack since Washington had no proof that bin Laden was involved in the attacks.
U.N. agencies report hundreds of thousands of people on the move inside the country -- and millions more at risk from the effects of a withering drought compounded by fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.
The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR has launched an urgent appeal for a quarter of a billion dollars in emergency funding to deal with the crisis.
Best Regards, J.T. |
