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Ultimatum to Taliban: Give up

Former president of Afghanistan Burhanuddin Rabbani speaks in a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul, Afghanistan.

(CNN) -- The political situation in Kandahar was uncertain Saturday as Afghan tribal leaders met with Taliban leaders in the Afghan city, urging them to surrender or face an attack by opposition forces.

The Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, retained control of Kandahar Saturday but had shuffled the top administrative posts, according to a senior member of a group of Pashtun tribal chiefs meeting across the border in Quetta, Pakistan.

Omar told the Arabic-language TV network Al-Jazeera Saturday that the Taliban were still in control of Kandahar.

"Kandahar is the center, which is still in our hand, the hand of the Taliban," said Taliban spokesman Mohammad Taiab Agha, who claimed that "thousands" of Taliban forces remained in and around Kandahar. "They have made a decision to defend the city of Kandahar and the surrounding provinces, and to defend the religion and the Islamic law."

"We stand firm," he said. "We stick to our positions to the death."

Omar has been working with his Norzai tribe in Kandahar to divide rule between the tribal leaders, according to reports.

The Norzai tribe -- the largest Pashtun tribe in southern Afghanistan -- recently held a shura, or tribal council, which appointed Omar's deputy, Haji Bashar, as Kandahar's administrator. Omar agreed to the power shift in a move one former Pashtun commander said is meant to show Pashtun tribal leaders that the Taliban are becoming more moderate.

Bashar told CNN that local trial law is beginning to be followed in Kandahar instead of Taliban rules. Kandahar was the Taliban spiritual capital.

But Mullah Malang, a former Pashtun commander based in Quetta, said he believes the move was simply a smokescreen, and that the Bashar -- a Taliban member and a respected Norzai tribesman -- is not moderate at all. (Full story)

Farther north, ousted Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani arrived Saturday in Kabul, returning for the first time since he was thrown out when triumphant Taliban militia swept into the capital city five years ago. "I have not come here to extend my government, but I have come for peace and to prepare the ground for peace and to invite all Afghans and even outsiders who are working towards peace," he said at a news conference. (Full story)

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Latest developments

• Taliban ambassador to Pakistan Abdul Salam Zaeef denied an earlier report that he had told The Associated Press that suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had left Afghanistan. He told CNN he did not know where the al Qaeda leader was. The Pentagon said it was skeptical of the report. (Full story)

• Delivering the weekly U.S. presidential radio address, first lady Laura Bush fired the first salvo in what she called the "worldwide effort to focus on the brutality against women and children" by the Taliban and the terrorists believed to be operating from Afghanistan's remote areas. (Full story)

• U.S. officials said Friday they have "credible reports" suggesting that Mohammed Atef -- one of al Qaeda's top aides to Osama bin Laden -- was killed in an airstrike south of Kabul. (Full story)

• U.S. warplanes Saturday bombed Taliban positions in two villages in Konduz province for more than three hours, according to a local Northern Alliance commander, who observed the bombing from a hilltop front-line position 2 miles (3 km) away. The alliance has promised to attack the provincial capital, which is the Taliban's last stronghold in northern Afghanistan, if the Taliban fighters do not surrender in the coming days. (Full story)

• Officials from the Northern Alliance say most of a group of UK special forces at an airbase north of Kabul must be withdrawn from Afghanistan, according to Reuters. (Full story)

• On Friday -- the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan -- a bombing run by two U.S. Air Force aircraft damaged a mosque in Khowst, Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command officials said. Two of the bombs struck the targeted al Qaeda facility, officials said, but a third experienced a guidance malfunction and missed the facility, damaging a mosque. They said they are unaware of any injuries. (Full story)

• The Senate and the House passed airport security legislation Friday, approving a deal reached Thursday that stipulates airport security be federal employees. A door was left open, however, for privatization of the services in the future. (Full story)

• The U.N.'s World Food Program has succeeded in reaching its monthly food delivery target in Afghanistan, the program's Executive Director Catherine Bertini said Friday. The agency reached the target of 52,000 metric tons per month, which it considers enough food to feed the country's millions of hungry people.