Afghan President Hamid Karzai told The Associated Press that Mullah Omar, the supreme Taliban leader who headed the repressive Islamist regime ousted by U.S.-led forces five years ago, is hiding in the southeastern Pakistani city of Quetta. Despite U.S. efforts to ease acrimony between two key anti-terror allies, the Afghan leader in an interview late Monday also blamed neighboring Pakistan for a surge in Taliban violence in Afghanistan and demanded President Pervez Musharraf crack down on militant sanctuaries. "We know he is in Quetta," Karzai said of the fugitive Omar, whose regime was toppled after the Sept. 11 attacks on America for giving sanctuary to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. The U.S. government has offered a $10 million reward for information leading to Omar's capture.
| "We know he is in Afghanistan. The entire world knows that he is in Afghanistan," Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Tasnim Aslam, said. |
Western officials have said periodically that Taliban leaders are based in Quetta, the main city in southwestern Pakistan, and bin Laden and other top al-Qaida leaders are thought to be hiding in the rugged region along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Karzai, who took came to power after the Taliban regime fell in late 2001 but is struggling to control Afghanistan in the face of a new wave of militant violence, claimed Taliban are also hiding in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, and in the tribal town of Miran Shah. Miran Shah is in North Waziristan, a lawless border region where Pakistan's government recently reached a peace deal with pro-Taliban militants after mediation by tribal elders. "I don't think the Taliban have a headquarters, but the Taliban have sanctuaries. The sanctuaries are definitely in Pakistan," Karzai said in the interview at his fortified palace in Kabul.