[Wolf Blitzer:] Tonight on
[Wolf Blitzer Reports:] Target Terrorism. City after city has fallen. Are the Taliban about to lose their remaining strongholds? We'll go to CNN's Christiane Amanpour on the ground in Kabul. Does the U.S. have Osama bin Laden cornered?
[Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser:] We're beginning to narrow his possibilities for hiding.
[Blitzer:] I'll speak with President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. After a series of stunning victories, does the Northern Alliance want to govern all of Afghanistan? Neighboring Pakistan may have something to say about that. I'll speak with Northern Alliance representative Haron Amin, and Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Maleeha Lodhi, as America targets terrorism. Good evening, I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting tonight from Washington. We'll get an update from Afghanistan in just a moment, and go to our interviews, including U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, but first, here's CNN's Donna Kelley in Atlanta with a quick check of the latest developments Donna.
[Donna Kelley, Cnn Anchor:] Wolf, thank you. Military and diplomatic pressure being applied to the two remaining Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan. In the north, the Taliban held city of Konduz has been under siege from U.S. warplanes and rival Northern Alliance troops for about ten days. But rather than surrender to the Northern Alliance, Taliban leaders in Konduz want the city turned over to the United Nations. The U.N. is reportedly considering the situation and has been in touch with the International Red Cross, which normally handles surrender situations. The only other major Afghan city still held by the Taliban is Kandahar and that could also be changing. Sources tell CNN that public support for the Taliban is waning. In fact, some civilians have tried to disarm Taliban soldiers. Pashtun tribesmen are meeting with Taliban leaders to discuss the city's handover. We have new information coming out Jordan involving terrorism. Apparently, Jordanian officials made three arrests a couple of days before September 11. They say that the men taken into custody were planning to bomb two hotels in Jordan as way of amplifying the attacks on American. The three men were arrested after investigators intercepted a phone call in which one of the men used a phrase believed to be an Al Qaeda code word "big wedding," code for "attack." Back to Wolf Blitzer in Washington.
[Blitzer:] Their regime shattered, Afghanistan's Taliban are battling on for just a couple of strongholds. Can negotiation avert a bloodbath? Will the victorious Northern Alliance share power? Let's turn now to CNN's Christiane Amanpour. She's in the Afghan capital of Kabul. Christiane, who appears to in be control of almost all of Afghanistan right now?
[Christiane Amanpour, Cnn Senior International Correspondent:] Well, the Northern Alliance are in control of about 80 percent of the country. And they have really seen the military momentum sweep so fast, further than they thought and quicker than they thought. And of course, the political momentum is dragging. And so, that's what the focus is on right now. The Northern Alliance President Rabbani came back to capital, Kabul, for the first time in five years yesterday. But he didn't come to say that he wanted to keep his presidency, rather that he was here to pave the groundwork for peace, that they wanted a broad-based alliance, that they wanted to make it more inclusive than it had been in the past and that they welcomed the United Nations and the United States involvement in trying to hammer out a future peace settlement.
[Blitzer:] But is it is there a sense also, Christiane, that the Northern Alliance will give up some of this power that they clearly have right now in order to work with the U.N., the rest of international community, in putting together an interim government in Afghanistan?
[Amanpour:] Well, that's precisely what everybody was worried about, whether once the reality on the ground took hold, which is as it is right now, the Northern Alliance would then be willing to share power so to speak now that they're in military control of so much of this country. But of course, everybody is watching them. The pressure is intense upon them. And so far, they seem to be saying the right thing. Of course, there was a moment when the Northern Alliance was dragging its feet. It wanted to this consultative meeting of all the various faction leaders right here in Kabul, in a place that it controlled. And that was meeting with resistance from other factional leaders, particularly the Pashtuns of the south. The U.N. wanted this meeting to be outside of Afghanistan as a symbolic sort of a symbolic move. And it appears now, that the Dr. Abdullah, the Northern Alliance foreign minister, is saying that they will exceed to what the U.N. wants. They will hold this meeting outside of Afghanistan. And he says perhaps as early as this week. We'll have to wait and see whether that in fact does take place.
[Blitzer:] Christiane Amanpour in Kabul, once again, thank you very much. Is the U.S. closing in on Osama bin Laden? Should the Northern Alliance be allowed to take the reins of power or should it be rained in? I spoke, earlier to today, with the White House national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. Let's get to the situation inside of Afghanistan right now. Do you, the U.S. government, have any idea where Osama bin Laden is right now?
[Rice:] We have no reason to believe that he has left Afghanistan. We do believe that he continues to operate in a fairly narrow range. We think that the more that we are stripping away his protection in a sense, stripping away the Taliban, stripping away the hardcore fighters that protect him, that we're beginning to narrow his possibilities for hiding. But I want to be very clear that getting the Al Qaeda network broken up is really what we're after here; that it's terrific that the Northern Alliance has had the successes that it's had. It's very important that the Taliban are fleeing and that they're loosening we're loosening the grip on the country. But this mission will not be complete until we have broken up this Al Qaeda network and until it cannot do the kind of harm that it did on September 11.
[Blitzer:] Have you narrowed the potential area where Osama bin Laden is to within what 30 square miles or anything like that?
[Rice:] We believe that his options are quite a bit narrower than they were when we began.
[Blitzer:] Is it near Kandahar in the south?
[Rice:] I can't speak to precisely where he is. But we are narrowing this, and we are putting a net around him, and eventually we're going to get him.
[Blitzer:] Do you want to get him alive or dead? In other words, do you want to capture him, or do you want to kill him?
[Rice:] As the president has said our view of this is that we have to break up this Al Qaeda network and we have to make certain that bin Laden and his lieutenants are brought to justice. And that's the focus here. The president has said we'll do it any way that we can.
[Blitzer:] Well, what would be better in your opinion? Would it be better to put him on trial to capture him, put him on trial? Or just to kill him?
[Rice:] I think the most important thing is that he's not able to function any longer, and we're agnostic as to how that happens.
[Blitzer:] So even a long drawn-out trial, he may be able to function in certain ways.
[Rice:] I rather doubt that we're talking about just given the circumstances here; I rather doubt we're talking about a long, drawn- out trial.
[Blitzer:] Mohammed Atef, one of his top deputies, do you know for a fact now that he is dead?
[Rice:] We are getting more and more confirming evidence that he is. In fact, I think a Taliban leader has said that we managed to eliminate him. That's very good news because he was the number-three man in the organization. He most likely planned a lot of these attacks. But the Al Qaeda network is more than one man. And we have made very clear that there's an entire leadership here, an entire command and control structure that has to be taken down.
[Blitzer:] Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, he gave an interview to the BBC this past week. Among other things, he said this: "The current situation in Afghanistan is related to a bigger cause, that is the destruction of America. If God's help is with us, this will happen within a short period of time." Do the same rules of engagement, as far as Osama bin Laden is concerned, involve Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the Taliban?
[Rice:] Taliban command and control, including Mullah Omar, are clearly have to be eliminated if we're going to be able to loosen the grip of the Taliban and to win this war. And winning this war, again, means getting rid of the Taliban leadership so that the grip on the country is loosened, so that we can rout out the Al Qaeda, and so that Afghanistan is no longer a terrorist haven. But this is he is considered command and control.
[Blitzer:] So you want to capture or kill Mullah Omar and his top lieutenants as well?
[Rice:] We are certainly determined to eliminate the command and control apparatus of the Taliban as well.
[Blitzer:] The Northern Alliance appears to be acting as if it's the new government of Afghanistan in Kabul. You saw the former leader Rabbani; he's now on the ground in Kabul. Seems to be acting as if he's the prime minister of Afghanistan or the president or whatever. And this seems to go against what President Bush specifically said earlier in the week. I want to play an excerpt from what the president said on Tuesday about the Northern Alliance. Listen to this.
[George W. Bush, President Of The United States:] They have no intention of occupying. And they said this publicly; they intend not to occupy Kabul, which is fine. That's the way it ought to be.
[Blitzer:] They're operating out of the foreign ministry, the treasury, most of the government buildings in Kabul. They seem to be thinking that they're the government.
[Rice:] In the first phases, when the Taliban were fleeing from Kabul, it's very clear that the Northern Alliance believed that they faced a situation in which the Taliban were really wreaking havoc and there was a kind of chaos ensuing in Kabul. And so, they used some of their security forces to try and bring about some order. They did keep the bulk of their forces outside the city, as they were asked to do. We've made very clear to the leadership of the Northern Alliance and they have said that they want to be a part of a broad-based government in Afghanistan. And that cannot be done if there's some kind of declared government up front. And so, what you're seeing here is, I believe, a willingness of the Northern Alliance to wait for the process that needs to get underway here. Mr. Brahimi is working very hard now to bring various parties together in a process so that a provisional government can be established. That government cannot be Northern Alliance only, and we've made that very clear to them. So have the Russians, the French, the British, others. Clearly, they understand what has to be done here, and we have no reason to believe that they are unwilling to participate in that process.
[Blitzer:] The Taliban soldiers who are defecting, what happens to them? Are they arrested, are they pursued? Are they brought in, are they welcomed as part of a potentially new regime in Afghanistan?
[Rice:] We're not going to try to dictate the nature of this government to the Afghan people. It is really the U.N.'s role and Mr. Brahimi's role to bring them together to discuss the solution here. Clearly, Taliban leadership and those who've been associated with the Taliban most closely can't possibly be a part of this, because obviously they have wrecked the country, they've been incredibly repressive. They've oppressed the people. They've allowed Afghanistan to be occupied by foreign invaders, including a terrorist cell that is doing great harm and damage to many countries all over the world. They obviously can't be a part of anything like this.
[Blitzer:] But are they treated as POWs?
[Rice:] They will be treated I'm quite certain that they will be treated well, unlike the way that they would treat anyone under their own auspices.
[Blitzer:] You've seen the reports, though, that some Northern Alliance troops are summarily executing, torturing Taliban soldiers and others, especially the non-Afghans, the Pakistanis, the Arabs who worked with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
[Rice:] I've seen lots of reporting about what is going on in a very chaotic situation. I've also seen reports that these foreign fighters, these mercenaries who came from around the world to occupy Afghanistan and to give cover and support to the Al Qaeda network are fighting back hard, that they've said that they are not going to be take alive. And so, we have to remember that this is a wartime situation.
[Blitzer:] Condoleezza Rice earlier today. After the brutal period of rule, do the Taliban have any part to plan in Afghanistan's future? I'll speak with Haron Amin, representative of the victorious Northern Alliance and Maleeha Lodhi, ambassador to the U.S. from Pakistan. Stay with us.