UN asked to send teams to Kabul

The foreign minister of the Afghan Northern Alliance said this evening that it had invited the United Nations to send "teams" to Kabul to help build a post–Taliban government.

Referring to U. requests that the alliance remained outside Kabul, Abdullah said its troops had planned to stop at the capital's edge but were obliged to enter because unruly elements were causing trouble.

"There was no option for us but to send our security forces into Kabul," he said.

"We have also invited the United Nations to send their teams in Kabul in order to help us in the peace process," said the foreign minister, Abdullah, who uses only one name.

He was speaking at a news conference in the capital hours after alliance fighters entered the city.

denied reports that opposition fighters had massacred Taliban in areas the alliance captured in its five–day sweep that brought the entire north under its control. The United Nations reported today that more than 100 Taliban fighters hiding in a school were executed in the northern city of Mazar–i–Sharif on Saturday.

The alliance defence minister, Mohammed Fahim, was leading a military security council to administer Kabul and maintain security, Abdullah said.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, he said the situation in the southern city of Kandahar, headquarters of the Taliban movement, was "chaotic" and that there was a popular uprising against Taliban rule in the eastern city of Jalalabad.