“The forces which have entered Kabul are not here to reinstate the government. We want to say to the people that we don’t want to rule and the presence of our forces should not be seen to imply that we plan to regain power,” Mohammad Habeel said.

He said Kabul was being ruled by a high military council led by Northern Alliance Defence Minister Fahim Khan, who would run the capital until a government was formed.

Asked whether the Northern Alliance would form an interim government, he said: “We have no intention as such, but with the approach of winter all delegates...will not be able to make it to Kabul and until they do so Kabul’s affairs, will be run by the high military council.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s pre-Taliban government has said it wanted democracy to prevail in the Central Asian nation.

The statement to the UN General Assembly by Afghanistan’s UN Ambassador, Mr Ravan Farhadi, yesterday was the first formal statement by his United Front, a part of the Northern Alliance, that it would bow to a UN-led process to install a democratic government in a post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Several key Afghan cities have fallen in recent days to opposition rebel factions including the Northern Alliance.

UNITED NATIONS: The UN Security Council has unanimously approved a resolution supporting the international community’s efforts to provide security and work towards a political settlement in Afghanistan following the collapse of Taliban forces.

The 15-member council voted for the British-French resolution encouraging all countries “to support efforts to ensure the safety and security of areas of Afghanistan no longer under Taliban control, and in particular to ensure respect for Kabul as the capital for all Afghan people.”

The resolution does not explicitly provide for an international force but provides enough authority for coalition troops already in Afghanistan to help maintain law and order in Kabul and areas vacated by the Taliban.

Diplomats said the provision authorised the USA and UK to provide the security initially. Besides, France and Russia have offered troops while Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey and Bangladesh have also shown interest to join the force.

The UN has said it will like a group of countries to provide security under the authorisation of the council but is opposed to peacekeeping or the security forces under UN command, arguing that it would take a long time to organise such a force.

The resolution also calls for convening an urgent meeting of various Afghan factions to form a broad-based multi-ethnic provisional government.

Mr Lakhdar Brahimi, Mr Annan’s special representative to Afghanistan, told the council yesterday that the UN should convene a conference with the Northern Alliance and representatives of factions backed by Iran and Pakistan “as soon as possible.”

Mr Brahimi has also decided to send his deputy for political affairs Francesc Vendrell to Afghanistan to gather representatives from the factions. He will later head for the Emirates.

It has, however, not yet been decided where to hold the conference.

They rejected UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi’s call in the Security Council for the formation of such a force, from mainly Muslim countries, “as early as humanly possible,” “The Washington Times” said.

A senior State Department official and other sources told the paper that the USA has in fact “never been hot on” using UN forces to deal with the volatile, proud and warlike afghans. The Bush administration, the official said, would prefer to see an all-Afghan security force replace the Taliban.

The USA, the paper said yesterday, is also reluctant to see UN member nations or officials do more in Afghanistan than reinforce the sense of security, prevent human rights violations and distribute humanitarian relief.

The paper also quoted “a source” as being not only cool to the idea of an international force but “especially reluctant to see troop presence in Afghanistan from neighbouring Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf yesterday offered such a role.”

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he remains more concerned with pursuing Osama bin Laden and his supporters. “First priority,” he said, “is unquestionably tracking down the leadership in Al-Qaida and Taliban. I would say the second priority is destroying the Taliban and Al-Qaida’s military capability, which is what props up that leadership, and tracking it down, finding it, and destroying it. Third (priority is) to create a presence that is professional and will be stabilising in those cities. And fourth (is to) begin the kinds of humanitarian assistance that these people are clearly going to need.”

“We will not accept a government of wrong-doers. We prefer death than to be a part of an evil government,” Mullah Omar said in an interview to BBC radio’s Pashto language service over satellite phone.

He said: “The current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause — that is the destruction of America.

“The plan is going ahead and God willing it is being implemented, but it is a huge task beyond the will and comprehension of human beings.

“If God’s help is with us this will happen within a short period of time. Keep in mind this prediction.”

Asked if his warning was related to Osama bin Laden’s threat to use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against the USA, the Taliban leader said: “This is not a matter of weapons. We are hopeful of God’s help. The real matter is the extinction of America and, God willing, it (the USA) will fall to the ground.”

On the setbacks suffered by the Taliban, he said it was not important how many provinces in Afghanistan were now under his control, because territories could be lost and regained.

He said the southern city of Kandahar still remained in the hands of Taliban.

He also said screening of Taliban for loyalty is in the process.

The BBC asked questions through a Taliban intermediary over satellite phone who passed it through a hand-held radio. The intermediary then attached the telephone receiver to the radio for the BBC to receive the answers.

“America can never arrest Osama bin Laden alive,” Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdullah told the Pakistan-based AIP of the man who is suspect number one in the September 11 suicide airliner attacks that destroyed the world Trade Center and sliced into the Pentagon.

Mohamed Hussein, (33) and Liban Hussein, (31), both officers of Barakaat, North America, were charged yesterday in a criminal indictment issued by a federal grand jury with “running an illegal money transmitting operation without a licence,” the US Attorney office said in a statement.

If convicted, the two men face five years’ imprisonment and $ 250,000 fine. Mohamed Hussein, the company’s treasurer, was arrested on November 7 at the offices of an unlicenced money transfer operation in the working-class Boston neighbourhood of Dorchester. He faces a detention hearing today.

Liban Hussein, who lives both in Boston and in Canada, was listed as the firm’s president. He appeared in court in Canada yesterday and was released on bail after the judge said there was no evidence he was “involved in any terrorist act or activity.” Hussein’s lawyer told the Canadian court that the US case was frighteningly weak.

Under the new system, applicable to men aged 16 to 45, applicants’ names will be sent to the FBI for checking, in addition to being run through the State Department’s database of suspicious or undesirable people, it said. The countries affected are Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE and Yemen.

Dhaka, November 15
Thirty persons were injured and more than 50, mostly political activists, were arrested during a half-day general strike called in Bangladesh today by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to protest against proposed gas exports to India and the US-led war on Afghanistan.

The LDF, which called the six-hour strike, claimed that 56 persons, including its leaders and workers, were arrested during the strike period and 30 others were injured in different parts of the country, including Dhaka, when the police attacked various processions.

Addressing a meeting, LDF leaders said the strike was a clear message to the government against its alleged anti-people policies and criticized the government for attacking the peaceful strikers by police and BNP “hoodlums” in different parts of the country.

Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina, the former Prime Minister, extended her party’s support to the strike.

The strike disrupted normal life both in the capital and other parts of the country. Demonstrators clashed with law-enforcing agencies in at least three places in the capital. While nine pro-strike elements were arrested in Dhaka, another 12 were injured, a LDF press note said.

Clashes in the capital took place in city’s Shahbagh, Mirpur and Topkhana area near the government Secretariat.

Opinion against the new Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led government’s decision seems to be building up, with the main opposition Awami League heading the anti-export campaign and even some supporters of the ruling coalition expressing their opposition.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s government, immediately after assuming office on October 10, had said it was considering export of gas to India.

Finance and Planning Minister M. Saifur Rahman, two days after the BNP-led government took office, said: “No resource in true sense is a resource if it remains under the soil... There are opposite views on the issue, but we have to take a decision based on the economic reality”.

Ms Hasina, whose government had dillydallied on the question of gas export to India for a long time and finally decided against it, said: “Gas is the only resource we have... There are conspiracies to take the resource away”.

She even alleged that her party had been defeated in the October 1 election primarily because it decided not to sell gas to India.

“The United States had asked us to export gas to New Delhi, but I refused. Then we lost in the election through a conspiracy,” she said.

The Shata Nagorik Committee, a forum of intellectuals aligned with the BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami, has issued a statement opposing the proposal to export gas to India.