KABUL — Afghan authorities warned Saturday the vanquished Taliban movement was regrouping outside the country, while hailing the surrender of a senior Taliban figure as a breakthrough in tracking down other fugitive leaders.
Afghan interim Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said some former leaders of the hard-line Islamic Taliban, overthrown as Afghanistan's rulers by the U.S.-led military campaign, were forming new organizations to oppose the government in Kabul.
"The Taliban leaders . . . apparently they are running new organizations," Abdullah told reporters in the Afghan capital.
"There are two organizations outside Afghanistan," he said. "We do not have details of the organizations or their structure, but on the whole it is not acceptable that the Taliban be able to act either outside or inside Afghanistan in any capacity."
Most Taliban leaders who fled Afghanistan are thought to be in neighboring Pakistan, which had previously given backing to Taliban rule. Abdullah said he received assurances from Pakistani officials on a visit to Islamabad Friday with Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai that Pakistan would take measures to prevent such activities.
But distrust has lingered between Pakistan and Afghanistan's Northern Alliance group of military factions, which dominates Karzai's government.
Within Afghanistan, U.S. troops continued to track down Taliban officials and remnants of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, blamed by the United States for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
A team of 50 U.S. troops Saturday investigated the site of a missile strike in southeastern Afghanistan to try to determine who was killed in the attack, a day after U.S. military authorities announced the surrender of former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil.
Khalid Pashtoon, spokesman for Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha, told Reuters Saturday that Muttawakil could provide valuable intelligence on the whereabouts of other senior Taliban — including supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
"Of course he will have important information. He was the foreign minister," said Pashtoon, surprised by the sudden detention of Muttawakil by U.S. forces.
Muttawakil was considered Mullah Omar's right-hand man, and Abdullah, the current Afghan foreign minister, said he had been living in the Pakistani city of Quetta with other leaders who had fled Afghanistan. Abdullah was unaware of the circumstances leading to his reappearance, but speculated that Pakistani authorities may have had a hand.
"I don't know how it happened that he finally gave himself up. This might have been with the aid of the Pakistani authorities," Abdullah said.
Pakistani authorities in Quetta denied any knowledge of Muttawakil's surrender or handover to U.S. forces, and a senior Kandahar political source, who said Muttawakil was a moderate, thought he may have made a deal in return for his safety.
A group of 34 prisoners captured during the Afghan war arrived at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Saturday bringing the total there to 220. The U.S. holds another 237 prisoners in Afghanistan.
A senior U.S. Army officer said interrogators were struggling to identify prisoners as Taliban or al-Qaida.
"A large number claim to be Taliban, a smaller number we have been able to confirm as al-Qaida, and a rather large number in the middle we have not been able to determine their status," said Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert.
U.S. troops were scouring a remote mountain site struck by a missile fired from a pilotless drone aircraft Monday at what was believed to be a group of al-Qaida members.
The private Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. troops arrived in the Zawar Khili, 20 miles southwest of Khost and 10 miles from the Pakistani border, on board helicopters and spoke with village elders.
The AIP said the missile hit a group of young civilians, three of whom were killed.
In Kabul, about 270 Afghan Taliban prisoners were released in a ceremony at the presidential palace Saturday under the watch of Karzai, appointed in December to lead a six-month interim administration.
"We decided some time back we should release everybody who did not have a bad record, who were not terrorists but just ordinary people," Karzai said.
Pakistani investigators said they were putting pressure on the family of leading suspect Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh in the hope it would lead them to U.S. reporter Daniel Pearl, kidnapped in Karachi Jan. 23.