BONN/KABUL (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Rival Afghan factions meeting in Germany made progress toward setting up a new, interim government for Afghanistan on Sunday as U.S. bombers and ethnic Pashtun fighters pounded away at Kandahar, the Taliban's last bastion in the war-shattered country.
With the U.S. military declaring that the battle for Kandahar may be nearing ``culmination point,'' Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States believed Osama bin Laden was in southeastern Afghanistan and it was ``just a matter of time'' before he was found and the Taliban were defeated.
The U.S. government launched its war on the Taliban on Oct. 7 to punish them for sheltering bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant it blames for the September suicide attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,900 people.
At political talks near Bonn, the United Nations prodded rival Afghan factions to finalize a post-Taliban administration after two decades of war, but diplomats cautioned it could take days to seal a final deal.
In one key advance, the two largest groups at the talks agreed to put forward the name of a former Afghan justice minister to serve as the head of the interim administration.
On the ground, U.S. bombers pounded targets near Kandahar and ethnic Pashtun fighters attacked the southern city's airport.
``Fierce fighting is going on to the south of the airport,'' an aide to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha told Reuters late on Sunday.
A tribal spokesman said earlier the Pashtun forces had met strong resistance from hundreds of bin Laden's Arab fighters entrenched there.
``The Arabs are really fighting; they know they have no choice; they are fighting to the death,'' Khalid Pashtoon, a spokesman for Gul Agha, told Reuters by satellite phone.
The U.S. Central Command, responding to reports by local officials that bombing runs had killed civilians both near Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad, said it had struck only at military targets of the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
At the southern Afghan airstrip near Kandahar where U.S. Marines have been massing, a senior Marine officer said he had expected the city to fall last week but the Taliban were still in control.
``But you have a lot of forces at play. Opposition groups coming from the north down, from the southeast up, and us coming potentially from where we are,'' Maj. James Higgins told reporters at the base, seized on Nov. 25.
``Everywhere the Taliban is looking ... a lot of pressure, kind of a snake squeezing in on them, and hopefully we can get them out of there in the near future,'' Higgins said, adding that the battle appeared to be reaching a ``culmination point.''