KABUL – The Afghan Northern Alliance said last Thursday talks on a surrender of Taliban forces in Kunduz had failed and it had launched an offensive that it hoped would capture the besieged province by the weekend. „We have tried to settle the issue of Kunduz through negotiation but we have been forced to choose a military solution,“ Northern Alliance Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni told Reuters in an interview. „At the moment our forces are advancing. We hope by tomorrow we will have secured Kunduz.“

Earlier, Northern Alliance warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum and some Kunduz Taliban commanders said after a meeting in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif that the two sides had agreed on a surrender for Taliban forces trapped in Kunduz. Thousands of Taliban fighters and Pakistani, Arab and Chechen comrades linked to the al Qaeda network of militant fugitive Osama bin Laden are encircled in Kunduz, the Taliban‘s last redoubt in the north of Afghanistan. Qanuni said 15,000 Taliban troops, including 9,000 to 10,000 foreign fighters were in Kunduz city and its surroundings. He said talks to negotiate a surrender for the troops had failed because the Taliban had put forward „difficult conditions“.

„We realised they were aimed at bringing division among United Front (Northern Alliance) forces,“ he said. „It was a political tactic. They wanted to buy time. They had no intention of surrendering.“ Qanuni said Taliban forces had insisted that they surrender only to one particular group within the Northern Alliance. The interior minister tried to allay fears for the safety of thousands of civilians believed to be trapped in Kunduz. „We hope and we believe that our military strategy will avoid any difficulties reaching the people of Kunduz,“ he said. „We have no problem with the people of Kunduz and we are counting on them to rise up against Taliban forces.“ Reuters