WITH U.S. FORCES IN SOUTHERN AFGHANISTAN (Reuters) - The Taliban vowed Monday to fight America to the death as U.S. forces poured into their backyard, taking the war on Osama bin Laden's Afghan protectors closer to a final showdown.
Some 500 U.S. marines, ferried in overnight by helicopter from a ship in the Arabian Sea, set up a bridgehead at a lonely airbase in southern Afghanistan, within striking distance of Kandahar, the militia's spiritual home and final redoubt.
General James Mattis said the operation went smoothly.
"The New York school of ballet could not have orchestrated a more intricate movement more flawlessly," Mattis told reporters who accompanied the marines to the airbase on condition they did not reveal its precise location.
Washington has backed up seven weeks of bombing with its first major ground force but the Taliban matched this resolve:
"We have decided to fight U.S. forces to our last breath," said a spokesman for the strict Muslim movement.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan with an iron hand until their U.S.-backed Northern Alliance foes swept forwards two weeks ago.
The Alliance said it took Kunduz, the last northern Taliban bastion, leaving them encircled in a dwindling southern fiefdom.
Southern tribal forces opposing them said they took Spin Boldak, on Pakistan's border, without a fight. Pakistan said it might seal part of its border against fleeing Taliban fighters.
OMAR IN KANDAHAR, WHERE IS BIN LADEN?
The Taliban spokesman said supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was still in Kandahar. But mystery shrouds the whereabouts of bin Laden, the man the Americans are principally out to get.
The United States is using special operatives, spyplanes and remote-sensing technology to hunt the Saudi-born militant, whom it blames for the September 11 suicide airliner attacks that killed nearly 4,000 people in New York and Washington.
Now it has also sent in the marines as it vows to track down the man with the $25 million bounty on his head in the rugged hills where, the best bet is, he is still holed up.
George W. Bush also gave a reminder his "war on terrorism," declared after the September attacks, by urging Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to re-admit U.N. weapons inspectors to see if he was building weapons of mass destruction.
Asked what would happen if Saddam refused, the U.S. president replied: "He'll find out."
As tension rose in Afghanistan, diplomatic efforts to form a new, broad Afghan administration tiptoed forwards, with informal talks in Germany ahead of a U.N.-sponsored meeting Tuesday.
Taliban resistance away from Kandahar melted and the Northern Alliance claimed it had captured Kunduz in the north.
Surrender talks had stalled there amid fears by thousands of foreign fighters -- Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens linked to bin Laden's al Qaeda network -- that they would be killed if caught.
Concern that they might not yield had grown when a firefight erupted between non-Afghan prisoners and their alliance captors in a fort outside the nearby city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
U.S. warplanes and helicopters were called in to quell the revolt Sunday which left hundreds dead or wounded. Some 30 or so diehard Taliban were still fighting on in the fort Monday.
An errant bomb injured five U.S. soldiers nearby.
Heavily armed U.S. AC-130 gunships and attack jets also pummeled targets in Kandahar overnight and in the morning, but witnesses said the Taliban remained in control of the area.
"There is no apparent sign they are retreating but Taliban here are in very sparse numbers," one witness said.
The U.S. denied it had also seized Kandahar airport.
In the province from which Omar swept across Afghanistan seven years ago, locals were fearful of the promised last stand by thousands of Taliban and al Qaeda comrades-in-arms.
U.S. forces could face a challenge if they attack Kandahar, where Alexander the Great once built a fort. The Taliban have tanks and artillery in one of the most mined regions on earth.
TRICKY TALKS
The Northern Alliance, which includes leaders the Taliban drove from power five years ago, is now the dominant Afghan force, in control of the capital Kabul and most major cities.
Their support comes from minority ethnic groups in the north -- Tajiks, Uzbeks and others -- but their power on the ground has won them a strong hand at the talks on the country's future at a hilltop hotel near the former German capital, Bonn.
Afghan exiles, U.N. experts and diplomats held informal discussions there Monday as other delegates arrived.
The talks, which start Tuesday, will be dominated by the alliance and supporters of exiled former King Zahir Shah, who comes from the country's biggest ethnic group, the Pashtun -- from whom the Taliban have drawn much of their support.
They will have 11 delegates each. Exiles backed by Pakistan and Iran will have five each. The Taliban have not been invited.
Burhanuddin Rabbani, alliance leader and who was Afghanistan's president until the Taliban swept him from power in Kabul, played down hopes of a swift agreement.
"This meeting is not a summit council," he said, adding that key decisions would have to be made at talks inside Afghanistan -- of which his alliance is now the de facto new ruler.
Earlier he held out an olive branch, saying Taliban officials with clean records could join a new administration.
The alliance says it supports Pashtun calls for a Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of tribal chiefs and elders, to select a multi-ethnic government to end two decades of conflict.
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