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CNN Saturday Morning News

Deposed Afghan President Says Return to Kabul is for Peace Mission

Aired November 17, 2001 - 10:01   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Deposed Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani is in the Afghan capital city of Kabul today. He says it's not a political move but one to lay the groundwork for peace. Rabbani was forced to leave Kabul in 1996 by the Taliban.

Afghan tribal leaders meeting in Pakistan are giving the Taliban in Kandahar an ultimatum to surrender in a week or face attack. Meanwhile, the Taliban's newly appointed security chief has told CNN tribal law is beginning to take effect in Kandahar. It's still unclear, however, who is in control of that southern city.

The Associated Press is quoting a Taliban official as saying that Osama Bin Laden Lieutenant Mohammed Atef has been killed. The report says he died three days ago along with seven other members of the al Qaeda terror network in a U.S. bombing raid.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: For more on those tribal meetings and the return of deposed Afghan President Rabbani, our Christiane Amanpour is in the capital city of Kabul with the very latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: President Rabbani is still considered by the international community as the rightful president of this country. He still holds the U.N. seat of Afghanistan. But he came back today to the capital, Kabul, not to claim an extension of his presidency or to prolong his government, he said, but to proclaim that he wanted a new, broad-based alliance to take over ruling of this country.

He said that the victory of the Northern Alliance over Afghanistan in the past week has been not just for one ethnicity, not just for the Northern Alliance but for all people of Afghanistan, north and south.

BURHANUDDIN RABBANI, EXILED AFGHAN PRESIDENT (through translator): We have not come to Kabul to extend our government. We came to Kabul for peace. We are preparing the ground to invite the peace groups and all intellectuals at once, outside who are working for peace. From this tribune, from here, I will announce, and I gave my message for the secretary general of the United Nations that they put the peaceful solution in Afghanistan in his first agenda.

I warmly welcome the United Nations secretary general's special envoy to Kabul.

AMANPOUR: The main purpose of today's press conference was not just to call on the international community to keep engaged in Afghanistan, to ask the U.N. to put peace here at the top of its list of priorities, to ask the United States to stay keeping the peace here in Afghanistan and to rebuild and help reconstruct this place in order for it to have a stable future. But he also wanted to put to rest any fears that the Northern Alliance was going to come back and take over political control as well as the military control they seemed to have over most of the country right now.

Back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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