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CNN Live At Daybreak

Pakistan Denies Reports Of Helping Pakistani Taliban Evacuate From Konduz

Aired November 29, 2001 - 05:39   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back. Now for a look at another side of a well-reported story you have heard quite a bit, I'm sure, about. All the help that Pakistan has given the United States in the war in Afghanistan. Now there are reports however that Pakistan might have been helping some Pakistanis that were fighting with the Taliban.

Let's hear more from CNN's Ryan Chillcoat (ph).

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RYAN CHILLCOAT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Exactly what happened at this airport is not clear. The Northern Alliance claims Pakistan's airports used it to evacuate Pakistani Taliban fighters from the besieged city of Konduz.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): There was even a Pakistani plane flying around here when we attacked, but it escaped.

CHILLCOAT: And these are the remains of a plane that Commander Machmoud alleges was being used by Pakistan for the evacuation. A fully loaded plane, he says, that was destroyed by an American bomb. But no bodies to be seen in the wreckage.

Abraham Zata (ph) says he regularly ferried local Taliban fighters to the airport in his buggy. He says the fighters he carried were working there and although he didn't see Taliban fighters or planes then fly away, he says there's no mistaking the plane came and went three nights in a row until last Friday.

ABRAHAM ZATA (through translator): My house is right next to the airport and I saw an airplane land there at 11:00 at night, sit there for 10 minutes and not turning off its engine, take off. It came back at 1:00 in the morning and did the same thing.

CHILLCOAT: The Pentagon says it has no information on any rescue flights from this airport. The Pakistani government vehemently denies it provided any aircraft to evacuate anyone. And Pakistani accuses India of making up the whole story.

MAJ. GEN. RASHID QURESHI, PAKISTANI PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESMAN: One is not surprised why the Indians are doing this. They have been trying for the last two and a half months -- over two months now, whereby they want to implicate, by some way or the other, Pakistan as having either supplied weapons, ammunition or personnel for -- to Afghanistan, which is absolutely false.

CHILLCOAT: On the ground it's impossible to sort through the rubble to come up with any material evidence. Even this destroyed flight data recorder doesn't tell us more than that the plane it came from was made in the former Soviet Union.

(on camera): One thing is clear. U.S. warplanes bombed this airport and left a mark.

(voice-over): This bomb crater on the runway is clearly fresh, but the planes could have landed before it was here and depending on the size of the planes, they may have even been able to navigate the runway after.

The Northern Alliance says it bases its claims on the word of local residents. We tried to verify those claims with people around the airport. These men have been searching near the airport for two weeks for the bodies of several men they say were killed by the Taliban.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We heard lots of airplanes, but the Taliban wouldn't let us get close enough to see who's getting on them. A Tajik from our village, who was working at the airport, told us the planes are taking the fighters to Pakistan.

CHILLCOAT: The Pakistani Foreign Ministry says the stories are preposterous.

AZIZ AHMAD KHAN, PAKISTANI FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESMAN: Under the present situation -- in the present situation, with the kind of presence and surveillance that is going on, for Pakistani helicopters or aircraft to travel undetected, go pick up planes and come back -- I mean it's just not possible.

CHILLCOAT: And so while a U.S. warplane soars across the sky above Konduz airport, on the ground it's impossible to verify whether this airfield was used as a staging area to evacuate Taliban fighters.

Ryan Chillcoat, CNN, Konduz, Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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