http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1669000/1669567.stm

Thursday, 22 November, 2001, 14:05 GMT

Alliance moves to seize Kunduz /
Taleban commander gets golden hand shake ..

Kunduz has been surrounded for a week Northern Alliance troops have launched a drive to take the northern town of Kunduz by force after talks aimed at negotiating a Taleban surrender apparently collapsed.

Correspondents say confusion now reigns, with some Taleban fighters reportedly surrendering but Alliance forces advancing on the town.

The Reuters news agency quoted Northern Alliance Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni as saying talks on a surrender of Taleban forces had failed. US warplanes have carried
out further strikes against the Taleban, who are exchanging heavy fire with the surrounding Northern Alliance forces.

Reports say Taleban positions in Khanabad - just west of Kunduz - have also
been hammered by Alliance tank and rocket fire as well as by US B-52 bombers.

Conflicting reports

For the time being, the reasons behind the advance on Kunduz remain unclear.

The BBC's Jon Sopel outside Kunduz said the military advance may indicate a battle for control of the town between different factions of the Northern Alliance.

Alliance commander General Abdul Rashid Dostum was reported to have said that Taleban fighters in Kunduz had agreed to surrender by Sunday.

But our correspondent says Taleban artillery fire early on Thursday may also have been taken by the Northern Alliance as a sign that any negotiated deal was off.
British Sky News earlier showed television pictures of hundreds of Taleban fighters laying down their weapons. But up to 10,000 foreign fighters trapped in the town
along with the Afghan Taleban are not expected to give up without a fight. They are thought to include up to 1,000 members of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda
network.

There has been significant troop activity on the road up to the front line, with heavy armour moving into position.

Maidan Shahr clashes

Meanwhile, fierce fighting has erupted in Maidan Shahr, a village about 30 kilometres (20 miles) southwest of the capital Kabul.

Northern Alliance tanks are pounding positions held by Taleban forces on the jagged peaks surrounding the village. The alliance says it is trying to dislodge 600-700 local
Taleban fighters and up to 400 foreign volunteers - mostly Pakistanis and Arabs.
The BBC's Peter Greste reports that the alliance had paid the Taleban commander Ghulam Mohammad some $200,000 to defect - but he took the money and
stayed in the hills.

It appears that the Taleban commander feared reprisals for acts of brutality when he was in control of the village. The Taleban believe they are fighting for their lives and
the advancing Northern Alliance have met stiffer resistance than they had expected, our correspondent says.

In other developments:

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is visiting Iran for talks on Afghanistan's future
Officials in New York say the death toll in the 11 September attacks is in fact below 4,000 Monday's meeting between the UN and Afghan ethnic groups has been moved from Berlin to Bonn, a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells CBS news he would prefer Bin Laden to be killed rather than taken alive US President George Bush tells US troops that all al-Qaeda members will be brought to justice and Afghanistan is just the beginning of the war against terror
The bodies of four journalists killed in Afghanistan on Monday are brought across the
border to Pakistan

Siege

Helped by heavy US air strikes the Northern Alliance has been surrounding Kunduz for a week.

A senior alliance commander quoted by the Associated Press news agency, Atta Mohammed, said the Taleban had agreed to surrender Kunduz and hand over all the
foreign volunteers with them.

"We told them, 'You are safe. We can transfer you to your provinces'," he said
from the town of Mazar-e-Sharif, where the two sides were holding talks.

A spokesman for Taleban supreme leader Mullah Omar in the southern town of Spin Boldak said just three entire Afghan provinces and part of a fourth were under Taleban control.

The spokesman, Tayyab Agha, said the Taleban southern stronghold of Kandahar was calm and normal, despite intense American bombing over the past weeks, he said.

But truck drivers and refugees in Spin Boldak say Kandahar is at least half empty and very tense, the BBC's Daniel Lak reports. Tayyab Agha was adamant that Kunduz was not Kandahar, and no deals would see the Taleban surrender Kandahar.