The Northern Alliance, which holds the Afghan seat at the United Nations even though it controls only a small part of the country, said the council should be convened with or without the fall of the Taliban.

The Loya Jirga, a gathering of tribal elders that has met from time to time throughout Afghan history to decide on matters affecting the nation, would consist of 120 people, said Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

Half would come from the Northern Alliance and half from other Afghan groups, including those living abroad, Abdullah told a news conference in this town near the frontline in northern Afghanistan.

“It should meet in Afghanistan as soon as possible,’’ he said.

“Those people from within Afghanistan, we can bring them together in a matter of days,’’ he said.

Ex-king Mohammad Zahir Shah struck a deal yesterday in Rome with the Northern Alliance designed to oust the Taliban and establish a moderate government in Kabul. However, the king himself is seen more as a unifying force than a pivotal player.

Echoing those who do not want a return of the monarchy, Abdullah said of the king’s expected role: “He will use his influence and introduce people who are influential to the council.’’

Under the terms of the ground-breaking accord, drawn up in a bid to end more than two decades of war, the Northern Alliance and the ex-king said they had established a Supreme Council for National Unity.

They would shortly convene a traditional grand assembly or Loya Jirga, which would elect a new head of state and establish a transitional government ahead of free elections.

Supporters of 86-year-old former King Mohammad Zahir Shah, who has lived in Italy in exile since 1973, said the Taliban would not be barred from the assembly but made it clear they expected the hardline Afghan regime would soon be ousted.

Pakistani military ruler Pervez Musharraf told the BBC yesterday the Taliban’s days appeared numbered because they would not hand over Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in last month’s devastating attacks in the USA.

Abdullah has hinted at contacts already taking place between the USA and his own forces, which have been struggling to make headway against the Taliban.

But he gave no concrete evidence of the timing of any attack on the Taliban. “Of course, it is not today, it is not tomorrow, but in days,’’ he said.

While America appears to be keeping its distance from the Northern Alliance, which is widely disliked for its internecine battles in the early 1990s that virtually destroyed Kabul, some form of cooperation might be possible, analysts say.

Reinforcing the impression that the USA would like to see the Taliban removed, a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington would support a meeting of the Loya Jirga.

In the meantime, the Taliban today raced to prop up old alliances, woo new friends and retain their own men as they dug in behind Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted man.

Abdullah said desertions by Taliban troops were on the rise. Several hundred had switched sides on Sunday amid fighting in western Badghis province near Turkmenistan, and they had been followed by more desertions from the Taliban in Laghman, northeast of Kabul. The reports could not be independently verified.

Meanwhile, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov today gave the USA the green light to use the Central Asian republic’s airspace for reprisal strikes against neighbouring Afghanistan.

Speaking after a meeting of the former Soviet republic’s security council, Karimov said he backed Washington’s decision to “end the scourge of the 21st century,” a reference to international terrorism.

Karimov was an offer first made last week when he said that Uzbekistan wanted a security guarantee from the United Nations in return for helping to destroy suspected Afghan terrorist bases.

Uzbekistan’s neighbours, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have offered their airspace to the USA while Russia and Turkmenistan have said they would allow the use of their airspace for humanitarian missions .

Meanwhile, the USA was expected to launch “limited” military strikes on Afghanistan, diplomats in Islamabad said, after the ruling Taliban adamantly refused to hand over terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden to Washington.

With the militia demanding proof that bin Laden was involved in last month’s terror attacks in the U.S. and terrorist camps in Afghanistan quickly emptying, diplomats believe Washington may not go for any large-scale offensive.

“Until and unless we are provided with solid proof of his involvement in the U.S. attacks, we cannot extradite him,” Sohail Shaheen, deputy chief of Taliban mission here, told newsman.

Shaheen dismissed reports of Taliban defections to the opposition Northern Alliance.

Islamabad-based diplomats said the growing stalemate had raised the likelihood of “limited” military strikes, which one Western diplomat said could start in a few days.

As the world body met to seek unanimity for a “concerted action” against terrorism, General Assembly President Han Seung-soo of South Korea said, it “transcended cultural and religious differences”.

India’s proposal asking for a global convention on terrorism drew support from French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte and his British counterpart Jeremy Greenstock who urged member states to accelerate work on it.

In his opening address, Mr Annan told the delegates that the governments had a “clear agenda before them”, and as a first step, they should sign and ratify the legal instruments.

He made a special reference to the convention for the suppression of terrorist bombings, and the 1999 convention for the suppression of the financing of terrorism, which needs another 18 ratifications before it comes into force.

New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, specially invited to address the week-long meeting, said the UN should hold any country accountable if it supported or condoned terrorism and ostracised it.

“Otherwise you will fail in your primary mission of peacekeeper,” he told a packed General Assembly.

Despite the facade of unity presented in the 189-member Assembly, the negotiators on the comprehensive convention against terrorism were, however, facing a difficult time, especially on the definition of terrorism and how to differentiate it from liberation movements.

DAMASCUS: German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer opened talks with Syrian leaders on Tuesday on joint efforts to combat terrorism following last month’s suicide attacks on the USA, officials and diplomats said.

Heavy US bombers, warships and elite special forces have already moved to the Gulf, and Central Asia near Afghanistan. Reuters

The paper quoted a senior foreign official, speaking on condition of not being named, as saying that the account was obtained through interrogation of Bin Laden’s extended family in Saudi Arabia.

If accurate, the account would represent the clearest evidence to date tying Bin Laden to the attacks.

But senior American law enforcement officials told The Times they knew nothing of the conversation, although they acknowledged some information was so tightly held in the Bush Administration that only a handful of people at the White House, FBI and the CIA might be aware of it.

The foreign official said the telephone call did not come to light until after September 11 and was uncovered only as investigators for a foreign intelligence agency searched for evidence relevant to the attacks.

Details of the conversation were first reported by NBC News.

Bin Laden’s mother, a member of the Alawite sect in Syria, took the phone call from her son while she was vacationing in Damascus, the capital, where she has met with him in the past, the official said.

The news, quoting CNN sources, said today.

The TV channel claimed that the wire transfers from Pakistan were sent to Atta through two banks in Florida.

Atta allegedly would then obtain money orders - a few thousand dollars at a time - to distribute among others involved in the plot in the months before the hijackings.

The newspaper said Atta lived in Florida much of that time. He took flight training on the west coast of Florida in the summer of 2000, and then rented a series of apartments in the Miami and Fort Lauderdale area this year.

CNN, quoting sources in West Asia, had said that Atta and two other men wired more than $ 15,000 back to the United Arab Emirates just before the attacks - what may have been leftover cash from the terrorism funds.

The money went to a man who flew out of Dubai for Karachi, Pakistan, on September 11 - the day of the attacks, The News said quoting CNN.

Atta sent $ 5,000, according to the sources. His Florida roommate, Marwan al-Shehhi, wired $ 5,400. A third man, Waleed Alshehri, sent slightly more than $ 5,200. The FBI has listed all three as being aboard the two planes hijacked in Boston and flown into the World Trade Centre. Atta and al-Shehhi are thought to have been the pilots on those two jetliners.

The newspaper, quoting officials in the UAE, have identified the recipient of those wire transfers as Mustapha Ahmad al-Hawsawi. Investigations were on to find whether he may have any ties to the Al-Qaida.

Representatives of state-owned Bazalt found ammunition being displayed by the Pakistan Defence Factories was quite similar to their own product, Russian news agency Ria-Novosti reported.

Bazalt Director-General Vladimir Korenkov then sent specialists to examine the ammunition in question. These experts said there was absolutely no difference between Bazalt products and those of the Pakistani firm.

When confronted, Mr Havar Nawaj, Export Manager of the Pakistani firm, admitted to duplication and immediately removed the products from the exhibition.

The Russian company has registered a copyrights violation case against the Pakistani firm. Nawaj agreed to legal proceedings and pay compensation for illegal trading in Russian arms, the agency reported.

The Saudi assistance, mainly in terms of food, medicines and clothes, was aimed at “easing the suffering of the Afghan people and helping the Afghan refugees”, the SPA said yesterday. The money would go to help some 7.5 million Afghans whose situation has worsened since the September 11 attacks

DUBLIN: Ireland is giving further humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, making this year’s assistance package the country’s biggest ever for a single emergency, the government has announced.

In a carefully stage-managed piece of political theatre scores of foreign journalists confined to their hotel by the armed police, watched through wrought-iron gates as the chanting crowds of Afghans and Pakistanis passed by beating an effigy of Mr Bush with sticks, waving portraits of Osama bin Laden and screaming “Death to America”.