Clerics Meet to Discuss bin Laden

By AMIR SHAH
Associated Press Writer

KABUL, Afghanistan - Hundreds of Islamic clerics met in the rocket-damaged Presidential Palace on Wednesday to decide whether to extradite terror suspect Osama bin Laden or to declare a holy war against the United States if it attacks Afghanistan.

In an edict issued to the council of clerics, the leader of Afghanistan's hard-line Islamic Taliban government, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ordered the council to decide the fate of bin Laden on Wednesday, according to the Taliban's official Bakhtar news agency.

The meeting opened with the reading of a speech from Omar saying that Washington's vilification of bin Laden without any evidence is "an excuse" to harm the Taliban, according to the Afghan Islamic Press, a Pakistan-based Afghan news agency with close ties to the Taliban.

Bin Laden, who has been called a "guest" by the Taliban, is the prime suspect for the Sept. 11 suicide jet attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The United States has threatened military strikes on Afghanistan if its Taliban rulers do not hand over the wealthy Saudi exile.

"Osama has denied his involvement. It is unfortunate that America does not listen to us and levels all sorts of charges and threatens military action," Omar said in his speech to the clerics. "If America still wants to attack us ... and to destroy the Islamic government of Afghanistan, we want to get the religious decision from you, our respected religious scholars."

As the closed meeting got under way, dozens of turbaned Taliban soldiers armed with rocket-launchers and Kalashnikov rifles stood guard outside the giant cement walls that surround the palace, lined with gaping holes from years of fighting in Kabul. A few yards away is the site where the Taliban rulers hanged Afghanistan's former communist president when they took power in 1996.

As many as 1,000 clerics from across the country, some driving hundreds of miles along dirt roads, traveled to the capital to help the Afghan leadership decide its next step regarding the terrorist attacks.

Pakistan officials met with Taliban leaders in Afghanistan earlier this week to discuss the U.S. demand to extradite him for prosecution.

The officials returned to Islamabad on Tuesday with no agreement. However, they said that Taliban was considering the possibility of extraditing bin Laden to a country other than the United States, if U.N. sanctions are dropped and the Taliban receive international recognition of its government.

The Islamic militia is only formally recognized by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council told the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and close all terrorist training camps "immediately and unconditionally."

The Taliban, which rules most of Afghanistan according to a strict interpretation of the Quran, have been placed under economic sanctions twice by the United Nations to press earlier U.S. demands to hand over bin Laden for trial.

The United States also believes bin Laden has played a role in a number of devastating attacks, including the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in which 231 people were killed.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, were trying to build a global coalition to fight terrorism using a carrot-and-stick approach to reward friends and punish nations that don't sign up for the war.

"In different nations the carrot may be bigger; in other nations, the stick may be bigger," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday

In radio reports this week, the Taliban said God would protect it if the world tried to "set fire" to Afghanistan.

"If America attacks our homes, it is necessary for all Muslims, especially for Afghans, to wage a holy war," said Mullah Mohammed Hasan Akhund, the deputy Taliban leader. "God is on our side, and if the world's people try to set fire to Afghanistan, God will protect us and help us."

Since taking control of most of Afghanistan, the Taliban have declared holy wars against the northern-based anti-Taliban alliance, Russia and Iran, but never the United States.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who has enraged some politicians and clerics in his Muslim country by agreeing to provide U.S. forces with access to his country's air space and land in a proposed attack on Afghanistan, was to make a televised address to his people on Wednesday evening.

The Taliban's foreign minister, Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, has condemned the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But he also said it would have been impossible for bin Laden to carry out such assaults because he lacks the facilities for such an elaborate operation.

Many Pakistanis living along the 1,500-mile border with Afghanistan promised to join a jihad against America, and possibly their own government, if there are retaliatory strikes.

On Tuesday, some 3,000 people in the Pakistani city of Karachi demonstrated near a mosque that runs a religious school many Taliban leaders attended, warning of more attacks. Many carried posters of bin Laden portrayed as a hero.

Meanwhile, thousands of Afghans were fleeing the country amid fears of retaliatory strikes on Afghanistan because of bin Laden's presence.

But Tuesday, the Taliban's Radio Shariat said dozens of shops had closed in the capital and their owners had fled because they feared an onslaught by the northern opposition, rather than a U.S.-led strike.