U.S. to cut Afghan force, 588 fighters surrender arms

12/6/2004 7:00:00 AM GMT

The senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan said on Sunday that the United States may cut its forces in the war-torn nation, by mid-2005 if Taliban fighters accept an amnesty to be drawn up by President Hamid Karzai and neighboring Pakistan.

In an interview, Lt. Gen. David Barno told the Associated Press on Sunday that reducing the 18,000 troops stationed in Afghanistan would bring relief to the U.S. military, already stretched thin by the much larger deployment in Iraq.

However, the force won’t be reduced before the country’s parliamentary elections scheduled for April.

"I think by next (northern hemisphere) summer we'll have a much better sense if the security threat is diminished as a result of, say, a significant reconciliation with large numbers of Taliban," Barno.

"That will change the security dynamics tremendously, and of course our forces are sized against the security threat."

Afghan officials exhorted Taliban fighters to end their fight and return from exile and help rebuilding the country; devastated by a quarter-century of war.

Barno said Karzai, who is to be sworn in as Afghanistan's first popularly elected leader on Tuesday, is to put a list of Taliban members who will be excluded from the amnesty and pass it to Islamabad.

Pakistan’s government would then "review it and make any comments on it, and I think there'll be a collectively subscribed-to list that says here who we all believe we're going to go after," he said.

The final number could be cut down to less than 100, Barno said.

On the other hand, the U.S. military is to start a register of lower-level Taliban members who are willing to return to their villages and live in peace.

"There'll be great interest in those first few figures who come in to see how they're treated, to see if they're protected or not," the general said.

"If it works, I think that there will be a significant number of people following it up.

"I think you'll see some of it starting in December, or in January for sure," he said.

Also supporters of the Afghan leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar expressed their willingness to end fighting, Barno said.

588 Afghan fighters hand over weapons

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMA) said that about 588 former Afghan fighters have handed over their arms over the weekend.

588 Afghan soldiers and officers have handed over their arms during "New Beginnings Programme," Manoel de Almeida e Silva told reporters in Kabul.

26,569 members of the Afghan military forces have been disarmed up till now.

In other developments, a UNAMA-backed 16-month training program for the Afghan judiciary ended on Saturday.

"The programme involved over 450 judges and prosecutors, around 150 of them from Kabul, the remainder from provinces," de Almeida e Silva said, adding that almost third of the participants were women.

Trainees were instructed on topics such as civil, commercial, administrative and criminal law, as well as codes of conduct for the judiciary.