Posted on 06/04/2004 3:26:05 PM PDT by MikeA
Taliban told US it would give up Osama - middleman By Mark Trevelyan
BERLIN, June 4 (Reuters) - U.S. and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the September 11 attacks to discuss terms for the Afghans to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary.
But no agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001, which bin Laden subsequently hailed in a videotape as the work of his al Qaeda network.
ZDF television quoted Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman, as saying he tried to broker a deal between the Americans and the purist Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were sheltering bin Laden.
He quoted the Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him."
A German member of the European Parliament, Elmar Brok, confirmed to Reuters that he had helped Mohabbat in 1999 to establish initial contact with the Americans.
"I was told (by Mohabbat) that the Taliban had certain ideas about handing over bin Laden, not to the United States but to a third country or to the Court of Justice in The Hague," Brok said.
"The message was: 'There is willingness to talk about handing over bin Laden', and the aim of the Taliban was clearly to win the recognition of the American government and the lifting of the boycott," he said, referring to the international isolation of the Taliban.
Brok said he was not in a position to judge how credible the offer was, but he passed it to the U.S. ambassador to Germany, John Kornblum. He said Mohabbat was then summoned to Washington to be interviewed by U.S. officials.
This led in turn to the German meeting, which ZDF said took place between Taliban ministers and U.S. officials in a Frankfurt hotel in November 2000.
The documentary, broadcast on Thursday evening, said the Afghans put forward "several offers" and there was talk of holding further negotiations at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan on where and when bin Laden would be handed over.
In fact, no more talks took place before September 11. But negotiations did resume five days after the attacks, in the Pakistani city of Quetta, ZDF said. This meeting has been previously reported in U.S. media.
Mohabbat said the Americans pressed in Quetta for the handover of bin Laden within 24 hours, but the Taliban were unable to meet that demand.
Within weeks, U.S.-led forces intervened in Afghanistan to drive the Taliban from power and kill, capture or disperse al Qaeda fighters based in Afghan training camps. Bin Laden himself is still at large.
Brok said he had not personally taken part in either of the reported meetings between the Taliban and the United States but believed there had been a "political decision" not to pursue negotiations after the one in Frankfurt.
He told ZDF: "I have to say that I consider this offer (on bin Laden's handover) very much more seriously with hindsight than I did at the time."
Former U.S. envoy Kornblum is now head of investment bank Lazard in Germany, and his office said he had no comment. A U.S. embassy spokesman said he was not familiar with the ZDF programme.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Oh, and also notice no mention of the Clinton administration in association with yet another lost opportunity to get Bin Laden out of Afghanistan and into the hands of justice. Add that to all the times Clinton turned down the Sudan when they all but offered to hand us Bin Laden on a silver platter. When Clinton's people told them to expel him to Afghanistan instead, the Sudanese offered to land the plane carrying Bin Laden and 150 top Al Qaeda leaders in Qatar so we could arrest them. Clinton said no, allow them to proceed to Afghanistan. The Sudanese then offered to provide us the flight plan so we could force the plane down ourselves, and yet again we refused. (Source: "Why America Slept" by Gerald Posner, Random House, 2004. Also see "Losing Bin Laden" by Richard Minitier for more information on Clinton failures to allow Sudan to hand over Bin Laden after repeated offers) Bet the 9-11 Commission won't ever talk about what Clinton's incompetence in contiually turning down years of offers by the Sudan to hand over Bin Laden meant in ensuring one day Bin Laden would attack us on our own soil.
Amazing howall of these stories seem to neglect to mention who was President at the tume.
But never fear. The 911 Commission will make sure all of this information is included in their report.
They will also announce to the country that this happened.
Won't they?
I remember Bush demanding the Taliban hand over Bin Laden repeatedly prior to the invasion of Afghanistan.
If there was a credible offer a year before 9/11, it would have certainly have been credible afterwards. That they refused is clear indication that there was not a credible offer.
Just checking the calendar here a little bit. You understand, of course, that there was a campaign going on at the time, and the regime of the "Former Occupant of the Oval Office, 1993-2001" was working harder than they had ever worked at anything in their lives for the election of the Incredible Walking Man Made of Wood, so there just wasn't even time to answer the phones. The Taliban made the mistake of not offering a campaign donation, which would have put them right at the head of the queue. But then, times were hard in Afghanistan, and there was not that much cash available. They should have offered opium....
I vaguely remember this coming up a year or so ago. The decision was thought to have been due to the in-process change of administrations due to the election. At that time, 'transition' was not happening because of the election result in FL being in the court system.
The media dropped it. They certainly didn't want it landing on the Clinton watch. But notice how they didn't mind trying to pin a 'response' to the USS Cole bombing on GWBush, even though that also took place on the Clinton watch.
Oh. That's right.
Well, it may still have been of doubtul credibility, but we will never know since we have recordings of Clinton confessing to turning down the offer.
"Uh, in Sept of 2000 Bush wasn't POTUS, Willard was."
You're not suggesting that billy jeff was asleep at the switch, are you? Maybe distracted by an intern? Dodging a thrown lamp?
LOL
Well if Al Qaeda said they'd turn him over I'm sure they meant it. I mean if you can't trust a terrorist who can you trust ?
/sarcasm off
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Yet another claim emerged Saturday that American officials had prior indications of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, this time from an aide to a former member of Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.
The aide to former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil made his claim in an interview aired Saturday with the BBC's former Kabul correspondent. The man, who wasn't identified, told Kate Clark he was sent to warn U.S. diplomats and the United Nations of the planned attacks just weeks before they took place.
But he said his warnings in July, 2001 to the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan and the United Nations were brushed off.
Muttawakil, a reputed moderate, turned himself in to the authorities in Kandahar, Afghanistan this past February and was given over into U.S. custody.
The aide told Clark that Muttawakil learned of the impending attacks from Tohir Yuldash, the leader of an Uzbekistan Muslim movement. Yuldash, he said, was in Afghanistan at the time and had strong links to al Qaida.
The BBC quoted an unidentified American official as saying of the aide's warning that there were so many rumors at the time that a kind of "warning fatigue" had set in.
The aide had also been told not to mention Muttawakil's name, the network said, which meant that his warnings had been taken less seriously.
The network didn't give any further information on the aide's identity or whereabouts, or when the interview took place.
Revealed : The Taliban minister, the US envoy and
the warning of September 11 that was ignored
http://www.angelfire.com/space/pearly/htmls/bush-ignored.html
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/stories/2001/09/28/attack/main312836.shtml
The Bush administration insists it won't negotiate with Afghanistan's Taliban government, but sources say U.S. and Taliban officials did meet at a Pakistani hotel.
Four days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, five Americans checked into a hotel in Quetta, one of the most potentially dangerous cities in Pakistan.
But CBS News has met with an Afghan-American businessman who
describes himself as a middleman (Kabir Mohabbat)and says he attended a meeting on September 16th between the U.S. and Taliban officials in the hotel in Quetta.
I suppose their willingness to be rid of him is why they tasked him to kill their chief guerrilla threat after they made him "Minister of Defense" for the Taliban regime.
This reporter doesn't even read the papers and official actions of the time discussed in his story.
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