AFGHANISTAN: Taliban condemns terrorist attacks in US

ISLAMABAD, 12 September 2001 (IRIN) - The foreign minister of the ruling Taliban Islamic Movement of Afghanistan, Wakil Ahmad Motawakkil, on Tuesday condemned that day’s terrorist attacks in the United States, and denied that Usama bin Ladin - who is a guest of the Taliban’s in Afghanistan - could have been involved in carrying them out, Associated Press (AP) reported on Wednesday. Motawakkil said the Saudi Arabian dissident, whose sanctuary in Afghanistan has greatly angered the United States, had been denied communications facilities by the Taliban, the report added. Since Tuesday’s attacks in the US, there has been widespread speculation in the Afghan capital, Kabul, that Washington would blame suspected terrorist mastermind Usama bin Ladin, and attack Afghanistan in retaliation, AP reported. In 1998, the US military attacked parts of eastern Afghanistan, where at least two of Bin Ladin’s camps are believed to be located, with a volley of cruise missiles, after the bombing of its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Washington blamed terrorists trained by Bin Ladin for those attacks. About 20 men, mostly Pakistani militants, were killed, but Bin Ladin escaped, AP added. The Taliban said on Wednesday that it would consider requests for Bin Ladin’s extradition based on evidence from US investigators. “We can study the evidence and take action in light of that,” the Islamic militia’s ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, told reporters. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was due to brief news organisations at the State Department, Washington DC, on Wednesday morning (10.30 a.m. local time) on the foreign policy aspects of Tuesday’s attacks.