Dawn reports that US helicopters have plucked an envoy of Afghanistan's ousted monarch from the clutches of his Taliban pursuers, the militia's ambassador to Islamabad said on Saturday.
The rescue of Hamid Karzai came eight days after the Taliban captured and executed Abdul Haq, an Afghan war hero who was believed to be on a similar mission to stir up defections from the Taliban.
Karzai, a senior Afghan exile, was believed to be searching for support in Afghanistan for former monarch Mohammad Zahir Shah when Taliban fighters raided his base in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan on Friday.
Taliban ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef said while talking to reporters here that four of Zahir's supporters were killed in the clash and 25 others captured, together with 600 weapons.
"I think Karzai has been taken out of Afghanistan by American helicopters," Zaeef said.
The Washington Post on Saturday quoted senior US government officials as saying carrier-based US navy fighter-bombers had fired on the Taliban forces attempting to capture Karzai.
"When the US military becomes aware of the need for assistance, they provide it," one official told the Post.
Zaeef said he could not confirm a report by the Afghan Islamic Press news agency that the Taliban militia had hanged three of those captured in Friday's raid. "I have no information of that," he said.
Karzai's younger brother, Ahmed Karzai, said he had spoken on Saturday afternoon to his brother and insisted he was still in Afghanistan. "He told me he was still in Uruzgan. The Taliban are lying. His mission is for peace and to help form a broad-based government," the brother said in Quetta.
Karzai is close to Zahir Shah, who is the focus of attempts to form a new government in Afghanistan if US military operations against the Taliban are successful.
Karzai served as deputy foreign minister in the Mujahideen's interim government after the fall of the communist regime in 1992, until Kabul was captured by the Taliban in 1996.- |
