When the US Defence Secretary, Mr Don Rumsfeld, told journalists on Monday at a Pentagon briefing that US special forces were taking no prisoners, he raised a few eyebrows. Could he really mean what people usually mean when they use that expression?
Unaware of the consternation he was causing in the press room, Mr Rumsfeld explained that this was purely for practical reasons and he appeared genuinely shocked when one of his audience eventually asked him to clarify his comments.
The following are verbatim extracts from the exchange:
Q: Mr Secretary, you had mentioned earlier that the US is not inclined to negotiate nor to accept prisoners. Could you just elaborate what you meant by "nor to accept prisoners"? Rumsfeld: We have only handfuls of people there. We don't have jails, we don't have guards, we don't have people who . . . we're not in a position to have people surrender to us. If people try to, we are declining. That is not what we're there to do, is to begin accepting prisoners and impounding them in some way or making judgments. That's for the Northern Alliance and that's for the tribes in the south to make their own judgments on that.
Q: So they would be taking . . . you're not suggesting they would be shot, in other words.
Rumsfeld: Oh, my goodness, no.¿
Later, of the battle for Kunduz: Q: So you would like it to be a fight to the death in that particular . . .
Rumsfeld: Oh, no. They could surrender.
Q: Then what happens to them?
Rumsfeld: Well, one would hope they did not get let go into another country or even free in that country. They ought to be impounded. I mean, they're people who have done terrible things.
The United Nations said yesterday it did not have the means to handle the surrender of thousands of Taliban forces under siege in Kunduz and urged the forces surrounding the town to respect the laws of war in dealing with them.
UN officials said they had been contacted in Islamabad on Monday by two individuals - one of them a religious leader - who said Taliban commanders trapped in Kunduz wanted to surrender to the UN.
--(Reuters)
