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Taliban leader still alive - Afghan Minister
( 2002-06-04 08:57 ) (7 )

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, one of the world's most wanted men, is alive and spending much of his time outside Afghanistan, the interior minister of the interim Afghan government said Monday.

"... Mullah Omar still exists. He is out of Afghanistan most of the time," Yunis Qanuni told reporters.

It was the first time an Afghan minister has confirmed the one-eyed Taliban chief and protector of Saudi-born al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was still alive.

"He comes and goes to his hideouts in mountainous areas along the border," said Qanuni, referring to the southern areas of Afghanistan on the border with Pakistani.

"Unfortunately, those areas are out of our access," Qanuni replied, when asked why the Afghan government and coalition forces led by the United States have failed to arrest him.

The comments follow reports that Taliban sympathizers operating on both sides of the southern Afghan border are pasting up stickers warning the United States of a Taliban comeback.

The 39-year-old Omar, a former mujahideen who lost an eye fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, rose from obscurity as a village mullah to lead the fundamentalist Taliban to power in the mid-1990s.

He imposed a harsh brand of Islam in the country, staging public executions in football stadiums, banning girls from schools, confining women to their homes and requiring men to grow their beards.

The United States launched a severe aerial bombardment against the Taliban in October, following the suicide airliner attacks on the United States blamed on al Qaeda.

Omar fled southern Kandahar, the main stronghold of the Taliban, in December vowing to wage a guerrilla war in Afghanistan's forbidding, mountainous terrain.

"The future of America in Afghanistan is fire, hell and a certain loss ...," pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat quoted Omar as saying in April.

The newspaper quoted Omar as saying in an interview conducted in Afghanistan that bin Laden was also alive, despite the intense US bombardment and subsequent hunt for him.

Al-Hayat Sunday also published what it said was a statement from an al Qaeda spokesman warning the united States to get ready for another attack.

"What is coming to the Americans will not, by the will of God, be less than what has come," the paper quoted al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman bu Ghaith as saying in a statement.

"So beware, America. Get ready. Get prepared. Put of the safety belt," he was quoted as saying.