By Sayed Salahuddin
Kabul - Thousands of Afghans stared upwards from the streets of Kabul on Saturday as pounding anti-aircraft guns brought the threat of US air strikes to the capital and the ruling Taliban tried to mollify their enemies.
A surface-to-air missile arced through the clear skies while the guns fired, but failed to touch two planes buzzing the city.
While a pilotless reconnaissance aircraft circled out of reach, a second high-speed plane darted away to the north, witnesses said.
"A plane is circling at high altitude and we are trying to shoot it down," a defence ministry official said, adding that he did not know the country of origin of the aircraft.
"Other provinces are calm. There has been no air intrusion in any part of the country, including Kandahar," the official said, referring to the southern stronghold of Taliban spiritual and supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
But the military net was closing around Omar, his hard-line Taliban clerics and his guest, Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant who is chief suspect in the hijack-suicide attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were winding up whirlwind tours in the region aimed at solidifying support from allies on the Afghan borders.
As they faced the crisis, the Taliban issued a flurry of conciliatory statements.
They said Omar had given orders to free a British journalist who entered Afghanistan illegally and also offered to release eight foreign aid workers accused of spreading Christianity if the United States abandoned plans to attack.
Omar now leads the world's most isolated country, but has given every sign the Taliban are prepared to face the world's most modern military with only outdated weapons and 1 300-year-old puritanical ideals.
"A few days ago, US officials demanded that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Taliban) ban the al-Qaeda organisation, extradite Osama bin Laden and close down his camps," the Taliban foreign ministry said in a statement issued in Kabul.
"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has not received any evidence against Sheikh Osama bin Laden for it to examine," it said.
"If the United States mitigates the sufferings of the common people of Afghanistan and gives up its dire threats, then the Afghan government will also take steps to release the eight detained foreigners," it said.
The aid workers, all with the German-based Shelter Now International relief agency, were arrested in August on charges of spreading Christianity, which they have denied.
Mullah Omar also ordered the release of British reporter Yvonne Ridley, detained a week ago.
"Our High Commission in Islamabad has spoken to Taliban representatives in Islamabad and they have confirmed that the Taliban in Kabul have said that Yvonne Ridley will be released," a British foreign office spokeswoman said.
Ridley, 43, a reporter for the London-based Sunday Express, would be freed on Saturday or Sunday, officials said.
The decision came just a day after Blair met Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. The two leaders sounded a death knell for the Taliban by discussing an Afghan future appearing to exclude current leaders of the hardline Islamic movement.
"We have agreed that if the current Taliban regime fails to yield up Bin Laden and it falls, then its successor must be broad-based with every key ethnic group being represented," Blair said.
The Taliban also decried US plans to parachute food aid to Afghanistan's hungry.
"There is no doubt that the real objective of such propaganda by the United States is to defuse the anger of the Afghan people against it," the foreign ministry statement said.
"If the Americans want to help people of Afghanistan, there is no need to airdrop the food," it said. "All lines of transport for all provinces are safe."
In Kabul, residents began the day unperturbed.
Stores were thronged by shoppers taking advantage of the strengthening afghani, up almost 100 percent against the dollar since the September 11 attacks started rumours that the Taliban's days might be numbered.
Topping conversation was not the possibility of an attack, but the rising prices of pomegranates and grapes, now in season but costly due to a three-year-long drought.
The United Nations also said life in the capital appeared to be returning to normal - or what passes for normal in a country where nearly three decades of conflict was followed by drought.
But the anti-aircraft guns shattered the peace. Frightened residents stared upward until long after the firing, fearing fighter jets might follow.
To their north, Rumsfeld won Uzbekistan's permission to use an airbase for troops and aircraft, but not for military strikes, and Georgia promised its bases for air strikes if the Taliban did not give in.
And the United States deployed its newest spy satellite, believed to be able to gather pictures and electronic data, as well as telephone conversations. It could even spot a campfire from hundreds of miles in space. - Reuters