Alliance troops target Taliban provinces

Northern Alliance forces say they are poised to seize two provinces where the Taliban still have some control in northern Afghanistan.

They are trying to move towards Baghlan and then to the Kunduz province, says opposition spokesman Mohammed Abil.

A victory for the alliance in those two provinces would ensure its dominance in northern Afghanistan.

Opposition forces are also pushing west toward the city of Herat.

Taliban officials had no immediate comment, although they do acknowledge their forces are in a strategic withdrawal.

US aircraft, including B-52 bombers, bombed Taliban positions at the front line north of Kabul. President George Bush is urging the Northern Alliance not to take Kabul before a new, broad-based government could be formed. But some opposition commanders at the front line north of the city were eager to advance.

In Washington, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledges the Americans do not have enough forces on the ground to stand in their way if the Northern Alliance tried to seize Kabul.

Washington wants the opposition to hold off on assaulting Kabul to avoid a repeat of factional fighting that destroyed the capital and killed 50,000 people from 1992 to 1996, when the opposition governed.

Rumsfeld says that while the opposition had effective control of Mazar-e-Sharif, "there are pockets of resistance within the city".

"There could always be a counter-attack," he claims. The city's airport had not yet been secured, he added, though he thought it would be soon.