Anti-Taliban Troops Ready for Offensive on Caves

Dec. 4, 2001 -- The assault against the Taliban intensified today as the U.S. military and opposition troops prepared to attack a cave complex in eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden may be holed up.

The developments in Afghanistan came as delegates of four factions holding talks near the German city of Bonn agreed on a blueprint for a broad-based interim government.

In Afghanistan, a senior Northern Alliance commander told ABCNEWS he was preparing about 1,500 of his troops, along with U.S. special forces on the ground, to attack the Tora Bora cave complex near the eastern city of Jalalabad today.

Although the Pentagon has no confirmation of bin Laden's whereabouts, the Tora Bora complex is a key focus in U.S. attempts to capture the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks and other leaders of his al Qaeda network.

"We're making progress. We're making it harder for him to find sanctuary. We are closing down caves, we are getting more and more of the territories under control of our friends and allies, and therefore, we have a better chance of spotting him in person," said President Bush in an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters scheduled to air on 20/20 Wednesday night.

"We're tightening the noose on Osama bin Laden," he said.

U.S. warplanes have been striking targets around Tora Bora for weeks, and there were reports today that Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian exile and bin Laden's second-in-command in the al Qaeda structure, had been injured or killed as a result of such attacks.

The reports could not be independently confirmed, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told reporters today, "I don't have any information I can add to that subject."

Arab satellite television network Al Jazeera reported al-Zawahiri was alive and well, but that his wife Azza and several of their daughters had been killed in airstrikes near the southern city of Kandahar.

U.S. warplanes have also been conducting heavy airstrikes around Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital, and there were reports of heavy fighting between Afghan opposition troops and Taliban forces near the Kandahar airport east of the city.

Inching Toward Kandahar

U.S. Marines have been based within striking distance of the city for days. Deep reconnaissance platoons, comprised of Marines from the forward base located to the southwest of Kandahar, have been increasing the radius of their patrols, looking for potential targets, according to Marine officers.

Taliban forces have been operating in less concentrated numbers, offering pockets of resistance, particularly in southern and eastern Afghanistan as well as in areas to the west and east of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Today, Rumsfeld warned that the situation could get more dangerous.

"It is a — not a very tidy situation. It's not an orderly situation, and there are risks that will exist for Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, probably to a greater extent going forward than was the case in the past," he said.

The largest concentration of U.S. ground troops in Afghanistan was bolstered by the arrival of additional Australian troops that joined an advance party of Australian troops on Monday. Under military ground rules, journalists reporting from the base may not divulge the number of forces massing.

Meanwhile, Northern Alliance commander Mohammed Jalal Kha told reporters his troops had captured parts of the Kandahar airport and were battling for control of the terminal building.

A spokesman for Hamid Karzai, a powerful Pashtun leader, said his troops had captured the district of Shahwali Kot, about 20 miles north of Kandahar, overnight.

Northern Alliance commanders near Kandahar said Taliban forces were putting up fierce resistance to maintain control of their last bastion. A spokesman for the Taliban said Taliban forces had repelled an assault by Karzai's troops after killing or wounding dozens of his fighters.

But there was no independent confirmation of the reports as Western journalists have been barred from the region.

There were growing reports of high civilian casualties in the villages around Jalalabad in the past two days by local authorities as well as Western journalists covering the region. But responding to a U.S. media report of the Pentagon allegedly avoiding the subject of civilian deaths, Rumsfeld today said it was "simply not so." Rumsfeld insisted that given the disorder in Afghanistan at the moment, it was "next to impossible to get factualinformation about civilian casualties."

A Major Breakthrough

After a week of grueling talks in the St. Petersburg hilltop hotel in Koenigswinter, near Bonn, delegates of four rival Afghan groups today agreed to a U.N.-backed accord to establish a temporary administration to rule Afghanistan.

The turning point came when the Northern Alliance, the largest Afghan delegation, presented a list of its candidates for a 29-member interim government.

Internal rivalries within the alliance, notably between senior Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani and younger leaders, had led to a frustrating delay in putting forward a list of candidate names.

But when the deal finally came through, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi admitted it was an emotional moment for all the parties involved. "There was a general feeling of jubilation when we finished. There were tears in some eyes, including my own," said Fawzi.

Delegates of the four factions today signed the U.N.-drafted proposal, making only minor changes in the original text. One of the additions was an agreement that an interim administration would aid the U.S. search for bin Laden.

Now, U.N. special envoy Lakdhar Brahimi, who is hosting the talks, is to present the groups with his draft matching names to portfolios, a proposal that would be the basis for further negotiations. They must also agree to a date for this interim administration to take effect.

Each delegation has submitted its list of candidates to fill the 29 seats jobs in the interim administration. The plan was for each to submit 15 names. There are more than 150 on the table — the Northern Alliance submitted more than 60 and the Rome group put in about 30.

An agreement would lead to a signing ceremony, which one Western diplomat said could come as early as Wednesday.

But meanwhile, U.S. envoy James F. Dobbins told reporters that as the talks reached the homestretch, the work was getting more intense. "We're in for a night of tough bargaining," he said. "But we're pleased that things are moving along the way they seem to be moving."

At stake is billions of dollars worth of international aid to rebuild the civil war- and famine-struck country.

Delicate Balancing Act

The interim council is expected to administer the country until a loya jirga, or traditional assembly, is set up — which negotiators hope will happen within six months. The loya jirga would then elect a transitional authority to govern Afghanistan until a constitution is drawn up and a permanent government is elected.

Afghanistan's former king, Zahir Shah, who is being represented at the talks by a delegation, would symbolically open the loya jirga.

Officials say the two leading candidates to be prime minister in the interim government are Karzai, the Pashtun leader currently fighting near Kandahar, and Abdul Sattar Sirat, a professor of Islamic law who served in the former king's government.

Diplomats say there is a "general understanding" that one of the five vice presidents in the interim government will be a woman and that "a few of the ministers" will be women. The agreement also says there will be amnesty for war crimes.

The U.N. draft document also recognized the need for a multinational force to secure Kabul and its environs until Afghanistan could organize an effective police and military.

However, it makes clear that security is the responsibility of Afghans and that no multinational force may go in to Afghanistan unless the Afghans ask for it. The draft document did not describe how large the multinational force would be.

Evidence of 'Dirty Bomb'

In other developments:

In the 20/20 interview with Barbara Walters, President Bush said U.S. troops may be used to carry out strikes outside of Afghanistan as part of the expanding war on terrorism. Asked about Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi leader's continued refusal to let the international community check if he is building weapons of mass destruction, Bush said:"I will warn him that he ought to let inspectors in."

A U.S. Special Operations soldier operating with opposition forces took a bullet in the shoulder, apparently smashing a bone. The injury was not considered life-threatening, but serious enough to get him out evacuated from Afghanistan.

U.S. intelligence sources believe bin Laden has more advanced capabilities to detonate a radiological bomb than previously believed. Based on intelligence gathered from inside Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence sources told ABCNEWS that bin Laden has made strides towardgetting plans or materials to make a "dirty bomb" — nuclear weapons capable of spreading radiation across populated areas.

See story.

The Pentagon has confirmed that a Taliban prisoner in U.S. custody appears to be a 20-year-old American citizen named John Walker, also known as Abdul Hamid. See story.

The United Nations has pulled its staff out of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan because of fighting among factions of the Northern Alliance. A U.N. spokesman said he did not know who was fighting but "the area around the city is very unstable."

The United States and Canada signed agreements to increase border security and coordinate immigration policies to secure the world's largest trade relationship.

ABCNEWS' Bob Woodruff in Afghanistan, JohnYang in Germany, John McWethy in Washington and pool reporters in southern Afghanistan contributed to this report.