01/04/2002

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The United States has arranged for Pakistan to turn over the Taliban's former ambassador, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, a senior U.S. defense official said Friday.

Pakistani intelligence officials have been questioning the former ambassador, who is in detention in the northwestern city of Peshawar, Pakistani officials said.

He would be one of the highest ranking Taliban members to come under U.S. control. The United States' top target among the Taliban is its deposed supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.

The U.S. official who disclosed the arrangement for turning over the former ambassador to Pakistan did not say where Zaeef would be taken, but most Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners have been held at Kandahar, the southern Afghan city where U.S. Marines have built a detention facility.

The U.S. official discussed the matter on condition of anonymity. He also disclosed that Pakistan in recent days turned over a senior al-Qaida figure, whose name he did not reveal. The senior al-Qaida figure has been taken to Kandahar for questioning, the U.S. official said, adding that he is considered a potentially rich source of information about the terrorist organization.

Zaeef was the most familiar face of the Taliban regime as he spoke on behalf of Afghanistan's hard-line Islamic militia during the U.S. campaign. After the Taliban's fall in early December, he applied for asylum in Pakistan.

"Zaeef is in the custody of an army-backed intelligence agency," a senior Pakistani official at the provincial Home Department told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Prison officials in Peshawar said Zaeef was not there.

In the Afghan capital, Minister of Planning Haji Mohammad Muhaqeq called Zaeef a criminal.

"I don't know of any particular crime, but Zaeef was a central figure, a member of the Taliban's inner circle and definitely committed crimes against humanity, in the world and in Afghanistan," Muhaqeq said. "He was part of the leadership of the Afghan al-Qaida."

Zaeef's nephew, Hamid Ullah, said Thursday that his uncle had been taken from his home in Islamabad.

"Since then we have not heard anything about him," Ullah said.

Pakistan had been the chief supporter of the Taliban until it agreed to cooperate with the U.S. military campaign that eventually brought down the militia. In the Taliban's last months, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – the only other nations with diplomatic ties to the Taliban – cut their relations, leaving Zaeef for a period the only Taliban envoy abroad.