Taliban denounces Saudi Arabia

The Taliban has denounced Saudi Arabia for severing links with the Afghan rulers, saying the move was "intolerable to all Muslims".

The Taliban accused Saudi of siding with ‘‘the infidel forces’’.

Fierce fighting, meanwhile, was reported in northern Afghanistan, where an opposition military alliance is trying to wrest strategic territory from Taliban fighters.

Reports were sketchy and the two sides made conflicting claims that could not be reconciled.

From the organisation of Osama bin Laden, the accused terrorist mastermind at the heart of the hardening confrontation between Afghanistan and a US-led coalition, came a volley of new threats.

‘‘Wherever there are Americans and Jews, they will be targeted,’’ said a statement issued in the name of Naseer Ahmed Mujahed, the military chief for bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network.

‘‘The holy warriors are fully prepared,’’ added the statement, which was faxed to news organisations in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Muslims everywhere, it said, ‘‘should prepare for jihad (holy war), and by the grace of God, victory will be Islam’s’’.

Later, the Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, appealed to Americans to ‘‘be wise’’ and urge Washington to reconsider its policies toward Islamic countries, as well as its next move.

That statement was also faxed to news organisations in Islamabad.

In the two weeks since suicide attackers used hijacked planes to topple the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and smash a wing of the Pentagon in Washington, many Islamic nations have agreed to support the still-emerging US-led anti-terror coalition.

But the prospect of American retaliation against Afghanistan has stirred anger in much of the Muslim world.

In a steady drumbeat of rhetoric, bin Laden and his Afghan hosts have sought to exacerbate anti-American sentiment and portray the showdown over the exiled Saudi millionaire as a battle between the West and Islam.

American and European officials, including US President George W Bush, have worked equally hard to counter that view.

In the rugged mountains of northern Afghanistan, where an opposition alliance is battling Taliban troops for control of key areas north of the capital, Kabul, reports say heavy fighting erupted yesterday around the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, a border city that has been in Taliban hands since the late 1990s.

Accounts of the battle came from Afghan nationals working for the United Nations in the area, said Rudy Rodrigues, head of UNICEF in neighbouring Uzbekistan.

Alliance spokesman Mohammed Ashraf Nadeem, reached by telephone from the Afghan capital, Kabul, also claimed the opposition had captured several villages in the northern Sangcharak district and killed six Taliban soldiers. Several alliance soldiers were wounded, he said.

Taliban military officials, though, scoffed at reports that Mazar-e-Sherif might fall, and Taliban-run radio said the attacks had been repulsed and the opposition suffered many casualties. It gave no details.

Afghanistan’s neighbour Pakistan has thrown in its lot with the US-led anti-terror alliance, pledging crucial assistance likely to include use of its airspace and military facilities in the event of an American military strike on bin Laden’s bases or the Taliban, or both.

But Pakistan - a close-up observer to two decades of brutal warfare in Afghanistan fuelled by the Cold War rivalries of the United States and the Soviet Union - is expressing misgivings about using the guerrillas fighting the Taliban as a proxy army for the anti-terror coalition.

‘‘We fear any such decision on the part of a foreign power to give assistance to one side or the other is a recipe for great suffering for the people of Afghanistan,’’ Pakistan’s foreign minister, Abdul Sattar, told reporters.

Sattar did not specifically mention Russia, which said a day earlier it was ready to provide the opposition alliance with weapons and military equipment, or the United States, which has increased its contacts with the opposition in recent days.

But he said: ‘‘We fear any such decision on the part of a foreign power to give assistance to one side or the other is a recipe for great suffering for the people of Afghanistan.’’

Even before the current crisis, the Taliban’s harsh and repressive brand of Islam had led most of the world to shun it diplomatically.

In recent days, that isolation has intensified: the United Arab Emirates cut formal ties on Saturday, Pakistan pulled its diplomats out of Kabul on Sunday though stopping short of breaking off diplomatic contact and Saudi Arabia severed links on Tuesday.

In a statement carried by the official Saudi news agency, the Saudi Government accused the Taliban of using their territory to ‘‘harbour, arm and encourage those criminals in carrying out terrorist attacks that horrify those who live in peace ... and spread terror and destruction in the world.’’

This, it said without mentioning native son bin Laden by name, was ‘‘defaming Muslims’ reputation in the world’’.

Later Tuesday, the Taliban called the Saudi stance ‘‘intolerable’’ to all Muslims.

‘‘Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, and as such, it should refrain from siding with the infidel forces,’’ said a statement carried on the Taliban-run news agency Bakhtair and attributed to Abdur Rehman Zahid, the deputy foreign minister.

Pakistan, now the Taliban’s only diplomatic link to the outside world, said it would maintain relations with the Afghanistan. Its president, General Pervez Musharraf, said it was best to keep the lines of communication open.

The Taliban embassy in Islamabad, and consulates elsewhere in Pakistan, were still operating.

Pakistan’s UN envoy Shamshad Ahmad stressed that neither the United Arab Emirates nor Saudi Arabia shared a border with Afghanistan as Pakistan did, in addition to hosting over 2.5 million Afghan refugees and sharing ‘‘deep-rooted affinities’’ with the Afghan people.

‘‘Pakistan is the only window left now for the world to communicate with the realities in Afghanistan,’’ he said in an interview.

‘‘So if we were to close this one window, what would the world do? It would have severed all contacts and communications with the realities in Afghanistan.

"By maintaining this relationship, in a way Pakistan is being helpful to the international community in dealing with all aspects of the situation, not only political but also humanitarian.’’

Meanwhile, intelligence sources said a US Defence Department delegation was sharing evidence with Pakistani authorities implicating bin Laden in the terror attacks on New York and Washington.

They said the delegation, led by Air Force Brig Gen Kevin Chilton, Pentagon director of strategic planning for the Near East and South Asia, was also outlining plans to use Pakistani airspace and military facilities and to exchange intelligence.

Talks had been expected to last only one day but were continuing today, the sources said.