Mediation said in progress

By Jim Heintz, Associated Press, 02/01/02

GARDEZ, Afghanistan -- After a two-day battle that combatants said killed at least 61 people, an uneasy calm returned Friday to the capital of an eastern Afghan province where rival warlords are trying to exert control.

Town leaders said the artillery of Bacha Khan, a warlord who tried to take Gardez by force after being appointed governor of surrounding Paktia province, fell silent at dusk Thursday, and did not resume in the morning. They said Khan's forces had retreated into mountains outside of town.

Shops and markets reopened and streets filled with people, almost all of them men, many carrying assault rifles and machine guns. Townspeople who had fled returned to homes and businesses, although many were bitter that the feuding warlords had again brought war into their lives.

"Other provinces are quiet, why not ours? Why is brother killing brother?" said Mohammed Ibrahim, a 22-year-old vegetable seller.

The factional fighting, which erupted Wednesday when Khan's men moved in on the town of 40,000 people, was the heaviest in Afghanistan since the interim government of Hamid Karzai was installed Dec. 22.

The battle added urgency to Karzai's appeals -- which he reiterated in London on Thursday -- for a multinational peacekeeping force to expand its deployment to outside the Afghan capital, Kabul, to stop violent squabbling between powerful local warlords.

"It's a demand of the Afghan people as a measure of commitment by the international community, as a symbol of their commitment to Afghanistan to stay on," Karzai said after meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Haji Saifullah, leader of the Gardez shura, the town's tribal council -- which opposes Khan's appointment as governor -- said the fighting killed 20 fighters on the shura side and 30 civilians. He claimed Khan's forces lost 50 men, but a Khan aide put their deaths at 11.

The shura buried its dead Friday. A flatbed truck waited at the town hospital, which had turned a bloodstained corridor into a makeshift morgue, to collect the bodies of Khan's fighters.

There were fears that conflict could erupt again. The shura side's intelligence chief, Ali Mohammed Yari, said Khan's forces had set up roadblocks south of Gardez and were confiscating cars from townspeople.

"We have no trust in Bacha Khan's people," said a police officer, Abdul Malek.

A Khan spokesman, Jilani, contacted by satellite telephone, said the halt in fighting was a cease-fire, called to make prisoner exchanges and treat the wounded. Both sides claimed to have taken dozens of prisoners.

Saifullah said a government delegation was arriving from Kabul to try to negotiate a peace.

The battle had threatened to complicate U.S. efforts -- including clandestine operations led by small bands of special forces -- to root out fugitive Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in surrounding Paktia province, southeast of Kabul.

In northern Afghanistan, U.S. special forces have scaled back their presence. That suggests that U.S. military interrogators have nearly finished with the major task of questioning the remaining 3,500 Taliban prisoners in a severely overcrowded compound in the northern city of Shibergan.

Meanwhile, in other developments:

-- President Bush said Friday his administration will "chase down any leads" that may lead to the rescue of kidnapped reporter Daniel Pearl, including e-mails purportedly sent by his captors. The group claiming to hold the Wall Street Journal reporter in Pakistan had extended a deadline for killing him until Friday, and vowed in its latest e-mail that this is the beginning of a "real war" against America.

--Afghanistan's grand council of tribal elders and leaders will meet in Kabul on June 22 to choose an 18-month transitional government to replace Karzai's administration and pave the way for elections in the war-battered country, a U.N. official said Friday.

--A patrolling U.S. Army Humvee detonated a land mine near the U.S.-commandeered airfield in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, but none of the soldiers inside were injured, the U.S. military said Friday. The Humvee sustained a blown tire and a bent wheel rim in Thursday's explosion.