A key Northern Alliance commander says he has reached an outline agreement with the Taliban forces trapped in the northern town of Kunduz. General Abdul Rashid Dostum said the Taliban would lay down their weapons in return of safe passage out of the town.
However as the US continues its air strikes in and around the area, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says that America will not accept any negotiated surrender, which would allow key Taliban figures to escape the city.
The Northern Alliance today halted its assault on the last Taliban stronghold, while attempts were made to persuade fighters to surrender. Abdul Vadut Kudusi, Northern Alliance military attaché in Dushanbe, said that there was no military activity in Kunduz itself at the moment.
Ariyonfard Shamsulkhak, press attaché at the Northern Alliance embassy in Dushanbe, said that the Alliance was talking to the Taliban in order to prevent civilian deaths in the city. "The local civilians are hostages of the Taliban," he said.
The opposition said that Afghan Taliban troops in the surrounded enclave have been offering to surrender but Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters linked to the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden were refusing to give up.
Local reports say more than 1,000 civilians had been killed in US airstrikes in Kunduz and the surrounding Khanabad district over the weekend.
A Northern Alliance spokesman claimed that about 200 of the several thousand Taliban inside Kunduz surrendered yesterday. Foreign al Qaeda fighters are reported to have killed 53 Taliban.
With no safe haven to flee to, many of the foreign soldiers have chosen to fight to the death rather than surrender, knowing that little mercy would be shown. The Northern Alliance claims could not be independently verified.
Concern has been growing for tens of thousands of civilians who are without food and shelter in Kunduz. The first United Nations trucks carrying grain have left Pakistan for the Afghan capital, Kabul, but aid groups say that not enough supplies are getting through.
In a separate development, Britain has postponed the deployment of large numbers of troops to Afghanistan amid growing concerns about the reception they would receive.
An advance party of British Royal Marines was sent to Bagram air base outside the capital, Kabul, on Thursday. This is understood to have angered Northern Alliance leaders who saw the move as a lack of consultation from Britain.
Abdullah Abdullah, the Alliance's Foreign Minister, said the arrival of British troops was an issue that must be discussed.
