Afghan reinforcements ready to take the field

Pakistan provides heavy security along border

U.S. troops stay on alert for Taliban loyalists in rocky, snow-covered mountains near Gardez, Afghanistan.

GARDEZ, Afghanistan (CNN) -- U.S. aircraft punished al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in the cold, remote mountains near Gardez, Afghanistan, on Saturday while hundreds of Afghan reinforcements with heavy weaponry waited in the Paktia provincial capital to learn if and when they would be pressed into battle against a determined enemy.

Afghans negotiating with Taliban and al Qaeda representatives have reportedly given them two days to surrender or face a new offense from the fresh troops brought to the battleground from all over Afghanistan.

Also, for the first time, Pakistan's army has seized control of the tribal areas of western Pakistan to make sure remaining al Qaeda and Taliban fighters do not escape across the border. (Full story)

A heightened security alert has been issued along the border and a military high command team is scheduled to visit there to inspect the status of the layered defense system, Pakistani officials said.

Meanwhile, citing a classified Pentagon report, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that the Bush administration has told the Defense Department to prepare contingency plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries.

The countries named in the secret report -- provided to Congress on January 8 -- were China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria, the Times reported.

The military also was directed to build smaller nuclear weapons for use in certain battlefield situations, the newspaper reported.

Operation Anaconda reached its eighth day Saturday in the craggy eastern Afghanistan mountains, where U.S.-led coalition forces fought alongside Afghan troops in severe weather.

"The weather is extremely bad," said Army spokesman Maj. Bryan Hilferty. "They're fighting at 8,000 to 12,000 feet, the temperatures are cold, it's raining and snowing."

Allied forces dominate much of the high ground, military officials said Friday.

More than 1,000 coalition fighters were conducting search-and-attack missions against enemy fighters lodged in mountain positions, he said. The battle is still being waged in the southern part of the Shah-e-Kot Valley, where the al Qaeda and Taliban troops are "hunkered down" to escape the harsh weather.

"If they're hunkered down, they don't come out as much and engage us, [so] it's harder to see exactly where they are," Hilferty said.

And should the enemy not emerge to fight, he said, "We'll go after them. Using fire and using maneuver, we'll go after them."

But Hilferty said he hoped weekend fighting would be the "final push."

"We've certainly destroyed a great deal of these terrorists and the extremists, but if there are more, as long as they continue to fight and they're there and they don't surrender, this mission will go on," he said.

Operation Anaconda began a week ago when intelligence indicated enemy fighters were gathering near Gardez, in the mountainous east, to coordinate an attack on Afghanistan's interim government. That they massed in a central location gave the allies an advantage, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The Afghan security chief in Gardez told CNN about the negotiations with al Qaeda and Taliban representatives -- or at least tribes loyal to them -- but the Afghan military leaders would not confirm the report. The military chiefs said that all such decisions are taken by the interim government's Defense Ministry in Kabul, but they indicated that the "preferred option" is negotiation.

Afghan forces in the region came from different provinces and different ethnic groups all over the central Asian country, prompting a local tribal chief to say that Afghanistan is "now a nation."

"We are all brothers," he said. "We welcome this support."