From FoxNews: Afghan President: Taliban Is 'No Match for Our Power'.
The Taliban do not pose a long-term threat to Afghanistan's stability, President Hamid Karzai said Sunday.Karzai spoke after the release of an audio recording purportedly of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar saying the Afghan government did not have the wisdom to solve the nation's crisis. A self-described Taliban spokesman denied the recording aired on Pakistani television was authentic.
The U.S. military said two coalition soldiers had been killed in combat that also left about 45 militants dead. U.S.-led forces are waging their largest anti-Taliban offensive to date across southern Afghanistan to quash the deadliest campaign of militant violence since the Islamists' ouster in 2001. ...
Karzai did not comment on the tape's authenticity during an interview with a cable news network. But he said that if Omar is "really in charge," he should emerge from hiding and "face the danger that he is causing to hundreds of young people in Afghanistan and Pakistan."
"It needs guts to do what he's talking about, and he doesn't have it," Karzai said.
Omar led the Taliban in the capture of Kabul in 1996. Following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, an American-led military campaign invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban for harboring Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden and his group.
Karzai said Omar and the Taliban do not represent a threat to his government.
"They exist in the form of attacking schools, attacking children, killing innocent people," he said. "They are no match for our power."
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Posted by Forkum at June 26, 2006 06:28 PM
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