Reports that Masood still alive are false: Hekmatyar

Agence France-Presse ^ | Thursday, September 13 4:46 PM SGT

[HAL9000]

TEHRAN, Sept 13 (AFP) -

Reports that Afghan opposition chief Ahmad Shah Masood is still alive following a suicide bomb attack are false, a former Afghan warlord was quoted as saying Thursday.

"Masood is indeed dead but his associates and comrades are giving false accounts of his physical state in order to keep up the spirits of the Northern Alliance fighters", Gulbuddin Hekmatyar told the English-language daily Iran News.

But he gave no firm evidence apart from saying it was impossible for Masood to have survived Sunday's blast, believed to have been caused by a booby-trapped camera carried by two Arab suicide bombers posing as journalists at his base in northeastern Afghanistan.

"The evidence suggests that the two people who died in the incident were farther from the camera than Masood was, so how realistically could he have survived?" Hekmatyar said.

He also discounted the involvement of suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, saying the assassins had obtained their entry visas to Afghanistan through the exiled government of Burhanuddin Rabbani which backs Masood.

Bin Laden, who is being sheltered by the Taliban regime which controls most of Afghanistan after taking Kabul in 1996, is also suspected of organising Tuesday's massive attacks in the United States.

Masood is reported by US and Russian sources to have died of his wounds, but the Afghan opposition insists that he is alive and recovering in a hospital in northern Afghanistan.

But Afghan opposition officials in neighbouring Tajikistan have refused permission for independent journalists to travel to the region to verify whether Masood is indeed alive.

Mohammad Saleh Registani, a top Afghan opposition military official who serves as a diplomat for the government-in-exile in Moscow, said in Dushanbe Thursday he had seen Masood Wednesday and the anti-Taliban leader had commented on Tuesday's kamikaze plane attacks on New York and Washington.

"The problem of international terrorism is today the number one threat. We think that the international community understands us better now," he was quoted as saying by Registani.

"Afghanistan has become a zone of international terrorism. It is from the Taliban area that numerous terrorist acts in the world are directed. They are carried out under the control of the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and the Pakistani secret services," Masood was reported to have said.

The Afghan opposition military official said Masood's health was slowly improving.

Observers have speculated that Masood's Northern Alliance could be trying to cover up his death to buy them time to find a successor amid concerns that the opposition could crumble apart without him.

The 49-year-old ethnic Tajik, who was a distinguished guerrilla commander during the Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989, has long been seen as the last bulwark against full Taliban control of Afghanistan.

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AFP via Babelfish translation -

Attacks: Massoud would be alive and blame the taliban

Thursday September 13 2001 - 7h20 GMT

DOUCHANBE, 13 seven (AFP) - the Afghan head Ahmed Massoud would be alive and would have indirectly blamed in the attacks anti-American the taliban, Oussama Ben Laden and the services special Pakistani, according to a close relation who affirmed Thursday with the AFP to have seen it Wednesday in Afghanistan.

Mr. Moukhamedsalekh Reghistani, military attaché of the Afghan government in exile in Russia, stated to have met Massoud, wounded in an attack last Sunday. He has in same marked time that the journalists were temporarily prohibited of input in the zone controlled by the opposition in the North-East of Afghanistan.

The person in charge textually reported the reaction of Massoud to the attacks of Washington and New York. " the problem of international terrorism it is the problem number one today ", declared the head of the Afghan opposition. " We think that the world community includes/understands us better now. Afghanistan became a zone of international terrorism ".

" It is from the zone taliban that one directs many terrorist acts perpetrated in the world. They are carried out under the control of the taliban, of Oussama Ben Laden and of the special services of Pakistan ", added Ahmed Massoud.

The state of Massoud " improves each day ", declared Mr. Reghistani. " the doctors recommend rest to him. They estimate that to speak is for him an effort as difficult as to work ".

" It is difficult to say when it will start again to work at its usual rate/rhythm but I think that that will take one or two weeks ", continued the Afghan diplomat.

Since the beginning of the week, the input of the journalists in the north-eastern zone of Afghanistan, controlled by the opposition, is temporarily prohibited, because " we do not want that the journalists will see it ", it explained. " But when its health improves, their input will be again authorized ".