http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/260/nation/Pakistan_urges_Taliban_to_turn_in_bin_Laden+.shtml

Pakistan urges Taliban to turn in bin Laden ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A six-member senior Pakistani delegation met with Taliban officials today and made an urgent diplomatic request: Turn over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden now, before the United States moves to punish the country for harboring him.

Senior military and Foreign Ministry officials leading the delegation talked with Taliban's foreign minister and were expected to meet spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar later today. The delegation was expected to ask Omar to ''consider that at stake is one person on the one hand, and [Afghanistan's] 25 million on the other,'' said a top Pakistani official privy to the talks in Kandahar, home to Taliban leaders.

Pakistan has pledged its full support to President Bush's declared war on terrorism, but as Afghanistan's neighbor and closest friend until now, the government is looking for the most peaceful resolution possible to the crisis. One result is today's mission.

Pakistani officials will also indirectly carry a message from Washington, conveying to the reclusive and internationally isolated Taliban - whose leadership bans television and may not be fully aware of the view from Washington - the gravity of the situation and the brimming wrath of a wounded superpower.

Today's delegation of Pakistani officials was led, according to a senior official, by General Mehmood Ahmed, director-general of Pakistan's covert military operations wing, which has secretly trained, supported, and helped finance the Taliban since it rose to prominence in the mid-1990s. The team is dominated by members of Ahmed's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or ISI, and includes a respected former ambassador to Afghanistan, Aziz Khan, to give Pakistan's message the maximum credibility possible.

Still, Pakistani analysts were pessimistic last night that the Taliban would hand over bin Laden, no matter how high the stakes. A senior envoy of the Taliban met with officials in Islamabad yesterday, after a Pakistani emissary had been dispatched to Afghanistan, and neither discussion produced a resolution.

In a related development yesterday, Afghanistan's United Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan - the opposition forces still recognized by most nations as the country's ruling government - pledged to assist the United States in nabbing bin Laden, including volunteering the 30,000 troops it claims to have.

Haroon Amin, the United Front's representative to the United Nations, reached by telephone in Washington, D.C., said the United Front and its soldiers would be willing to ''do the ground work ourselves,'' carrying out military, surveillance, and other missions with American logistical and military support.

He said that the United Front had been ''in contact with US officials'' and that ''we have been exchanging views on the way we can hopefully go about doing something about the situation.''

Meanwhile, witnesses in the Afghan capital, Kabul, reported that terrified residents were fleeing in fear of impending attack, many of them headed for the border with Pakistan, where 3 million Afghan refugees have taken shelter over the last 20 years. There are 300,000 displaced persons inside Afghanistan who relief workers say could starve to death in a matter of months.

Taliban rulers urged Afghans to stay behind to wage jihad to the death. Those who lined up to cross the border at Torkham were beaten back with sticks by Taliban militiamen. Residents too poor or immobile to leave Kabul were scraping together whatever money they had to buy food to prepare for a US strike.

The doubts that the Taliban would hand over bin Laden stemmed from several sticking points. The centuries-old ''Pashtun Wali'' code of brotherhood held dear by the Taliban and all Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, holds that if someone asks for your protection from an enemy, you must shelter him. To turn someone over after promising shelter would undermine the honor of any self-respecting Pashtun, Afghan specialists say.

After US authorities linked bin Laden to several high-profile terrorist attacks, including the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Africa and the bombing of the USS Cole last year, the Taliban said they would hand him over to an Afghan religious court or to an outside panel of Islamic judges if the United States presented sufficient evidence of his guilt.

State Department officials visiting Pakistan early this year said they have ignored the Taliban's repeated offer, because they doubt that bin Laden would be punished by an Islamic court, said former Pakistani interior minister Nasirullah Babar.

Babar, familiar with the Taliban because he spearheaded Pakistan's sponsorship of the movement as a way to bring stability to Afghanistan, noted that there is also a clause in the Pashtun code that holds that anyone who gives someone protection is responsible for his guest's good conduct. By that logic, Pakistani envoys could argue that it is the Taliban's moral duty to hand over someone believed to have masterminded a horrific crime.

''They are a pragmatic people. ... If the message is presented to them in a good way, maybe they will agree,'' said Babar.

Most other analysts were less hopeful, saying that Taliban leader Omar has staked his reputation on shielding bin Laden against ''the infidels.'' The two men's personal ties are so close - Omar is married to one of bin Laden's daughters, and his bodyguards are said to be provided by bin Laden - that he would be loath to turn him over, say Afghanistan specialists.

Pakistan's desire to see bin Laden turned over stems in part from its desire to avert war in the region and avoid an inevitable domestic backlash from Muslim fundamentalists.

Pakistan's largest extremist religious party, Jamaat-i-Islami, yesterday called for a gathering of more than 40 political and religious parties in Lahore who jointly expressed their opposition to US bases in Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military leader who took power in a bloodless coup two years ago, met with those parties and others last night to try to secure their support for his commitment to aid the United States.

Meanwhile, military sources said Pakistan has moved some forces from its border with archrival India to its Afghan border.

A Finance Ministry official said Pakistan has asked the United States to arrange forgiveness for some $30 billion in international loans that the country is barely able to finance with its paltry $2.5 billion foreign reserves.

It remained unclear yesterday what role, if any, opposition forces in Afghanistan would play in the US effort. The United Front, also known as the Northern Alliance, is a coalition of anti-Taliban resistance movements that still enjoys diplomatic recognition but has little or no governing structure.

Until yesterday, the opposition forces were headed by Ahmed Shah Massood, who had drawn the various Afghan factions together. But Massood died yesterday from wounds suffered during an assassination attempt that took place just a few days before last week's attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Bin Laden is suspected in Massood's assassination.

Should the United States choose to send group troops into Afghanistan, analysts say, the United Front's offer of assistance could prove to be a valuable one.

Militarily, they are poorly equipped, having waged a guerrilla-style war for years against the Taliban with little success. Estimates of 30,000 troops are regarded as high, and the resistance movement operates out of pockets across the country.

But with firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan's rugged, battle-scarred terrain, the United Front troops could be ''a big asset,'' said Barnett Rubin, a specialist on Afghanistan at New York University. ''They can offer political legitimacy, a knowledge of what to expect on the ground, and contacts in the local society.''

-- Anonymous, September 17, 2001