ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has agreed to surrender Kandahar, and his forces will hand over the city to Afghani tribal leaders on Friday.
"We have accepted a deal for peaceful surrender, which will protect the lives and dignity of the Taliban fighters and their leaders," the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Abdus Salaam Zaeef, told journalists in Islamabad. "Heavy U.S. bombings contributed to our decision to surrender."
He claimed the amnesty also would apply to Omar, the reclusive Taliban leader, who had earlier vowed to fight till death.
The new head of the interim Afghan government, Hamid Karzai, also confirmed the news, saying that "after face-to-face talks" with him, the Taliban leader had agreed to surrender.
"The Taliban fighters who surrender their arms will be allowed to go home," said Karzai while talking to journalists by satellite phone from Kandahar where he was leading a tribal uprising against the religious militia.
Karzai's brother also confirmed the Taliban's decision to surrender Kandahar.
"I have spoken with my brother and he said that his negotiations with the Taliban were successful. They have agreed to hand over Kandahar," Ahmed Karzai told United Press International in the Pakistani border town of Quetta.
Hamid Karzai did not say if Omar also will be pardoned but added "those Taliban leaders who sever their links with Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida network will be forgiven."
A Saudi fugitive hiding in Afghanistan since 1996, bin Laden is the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States that killed about 4,000 people.
It was their refusal to hand over bin Laden that led to the current U.S. military action against the Taliban leaders and their humiliating defeat in Kabul and elsewhere.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the United States would not intend for Omar to remain free in Afghanistan following the surrender. He military forces would have to monitor and hold senior Taliban and al Qaida leadership.
"How that would be done, I don't know," Rumsfeld told a news briefing in Washington. But he said the United States would not want leaders of al Qaida to go free because they would likely commit acts of terror in other countries.
Karzai, who was elected to his new post on Wednesday by a U.N.-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany, said the surrender deal was aimed at "protecting the lives of Afghans and avoiding further bloodshed."
Another Taliban spokesman, Syed Mohammed Haqqani, has said the Taliban would surrender all three southern provinces of Helmund, Kandahar and Zabul still in their control.
The Pentagon has also confirmed the Taliban and Pashtun tribal leaders were negotiating a deal for Kandahar's surrender.
The deal, negotiated between Taliban commanders and leaders of the Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan, offers no amnesty to hundreds of Arab and Pakistani militants associated with bin Laden or the Taliban.
While Karzai reportedly said the foreign fighters in Afghanistan will be held accountable for the crimes they have committed, Zaeef also indicated the Taliban have abandoned their Arab friends.
"Osama and his friends are not in Kandahar ... those who are still in Afghanistan should leave the country ... we cannot guarantee their security," he said.
Hundreds of al Qaida fighters are believed to be in Kandahar, especially around the airport where they beat back assaults by tribal fighters under former Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha.
The United States has made clear it would not support any deal which allowed bin Laden or his lieutenants to escape prosecution.
However, it appears that Karzai has accepted the Taliban's last demand of not "surrendering to (his) U.S.-backed administration," formed Wednesday in Germany for an interim period of six months.
"Both sides (the Taliban and the tribal leaders) have decided that we will not surrender our weapons to Hamid Karzai," said Zaeef.
"Instead, we will surrender to Mullah Naquibullah," a former guerrilla commander against Soviet occupation forces, he said.
"Mullah Omar has taken the decision for the welfare of the people, to avoid casualties and to save the life and dignity of Afghans."
Zaeef said the handover would begin Friday and that Omar would be allowed to stay in the city under tribal protection.
"I don't know about the guarantees, but Karzai and the tribal leaders have promised him protection," he said.
Zaeef also claimed Karzai had agreed to release all Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan and give them free passage home.
The former Taliban envoy, who until Wednesday had insisted the Taliban still had a role to play, agreed with a journalist who suggested the Taliban movement had failed.
"Our days are over. I think we should go home," Zaeef said.
Karzai, however, had earlier indicated that repenting Taliban officials might be included in the new administration.
Zaeef defended the Taliban movement saying it had "done a lot for the welfare of the people," he said.
