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Afghan FM rejects amnesty for fugitive Taleban leader, warlord
TOKYO - Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah ruled out an amnesty for the leader of the ousted Taleban regime and a most wanted warlord after a commission suggested bringing them into the political mainstream. Afghanistan's reconciliation commission said on May 9 that former Taleban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and veteran guerrilla Gulbuddin Hekmatyar could be pardoned if they disarmed and obeyed the new government. But Abdullah, in an interview published Thursday in the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's top-selling daily, dismissed the proposal by the autonomous commission. "The two men are terrorists who are said to have links with the international terrorist group Al Qaeda. They should not be part of that" amnesty offer, he said.
They're also increasingly irrelevant.
Omar has been fleeing on the run since his hardline Islamic regime was toppled in a US-led invasion following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. A Taleban source earlier said Omar would not accept an amnesty.

Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and warlord who throws like a little girl fought the Soviets in the 1980s, heads the fundamentalist Hezb-i-Islami faction and has been declared a terrorist by Washington for trying to destabilize Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai offered an olive branch to rank-and-file Taleban fighters last year and said all but a hardcore of 150 militants wanted for human rights violations would be able to rejoin the political process.
Posted by: Steve White 2005-05-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=119517