| Good Lord! I hope we didn't pay much for it! |
Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar accused Afghanistan's Western-backed president of selling the country to the United States and urged Afghans to resist, a Pakistan-based news agency said on Wednesday. The accusation followed the signing this week by President Hamid Karzaiof a broad "strategic partnership" agreement with President Bush covering security and other issues and allowing U.S. forces continued freedom of action. "The land of Afghanistan has been sold to the Americans for an indefinite period of time," Omar was quoted as saying by the Afghan Islamic Press news agency on Wednesday.The news agency, based in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, said the statement, said to be from Omar, was read by a senior Taliban official over the telephone. The United States commands a foreign force in Afghanistan of about 18,300, most of them American, fighting Taliban insurgents and hunting militant leaders, including Osama bin Laden and Omar. Both bin Laden and Omar are believed to be hiding along the rugged border between Pakistan and Afghanistan but there has been no definitive word of their whereabouts for years. Under their partnership agreement, U.S. forces will continue to have access to their main air base at Bagam, near Kabul, and other facilities "as may be mutually determined," the agreement says. U.S. forces will continue to have freedom of action, despite a call from Karzai for more Afghan control of U.S. operations. "In my view, any heart which has an iota of faith and valor in it will not tolerate such a sale agreement and would openly oppose it," the statement attributed to Omar said. "This is not just the issue of the Taliban, rather every independent Afghan's conscience."