Taliban boss ... on of the few existing images of Mullah Mohammed Omar / Wikipedia
Taliban offers forces retreat from Afghanistan
Reject offer- "suffer defeat like Soviet forces"
No immediate reaction from US or NATO
TALIBAN supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar today offered international forces a safe retreat from Afghanistan if they agree to withdraw from the war-torn country.
If US and NATO troops battling the hardline militia failed to take up the offer, they would suffer a defeat like Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said the message posted on the internet.
"I say to the invaders: if you leave our country, we will provide you the safe context to do so," Omar said in the statement marking the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Fitr.
"If you insist on your invasion, you will be defeated like the Russians before you."
The Red Army pulled out of Afghanistan in 1989 after 10 years of fighting that cost the lives of at least 10,000 Soviet troops.
A civil war followed after which Omar`s Taliban movement took power in 1996.
There was no immediate reaction from the US-led coalition, which invaded Afghanistan to oust the Taliban after 9/11, or the separate NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.
Omar, who has been in hiding since the fall of the Taliban Government in late 2001, said in the message that he offered his support to all those fighting foreign troops in Afghanistan.
"The Americans, with their advanced technology, could not have predicted their defeat but now, with God`s help, every day they welcome their soldiers` dead bodies and are facing severe losses of lives and finance," he said.
"Several years ago, no one thought that Americans and their friends would face such hard resistance, that today the (Afghan) President and his ministers would beg for money, weapons and soldiers while no one gives a positive answer.
"They came to our country seven years ago and they have not succeeded in their targets - and they will never succeed, even in a hundred years."
This year has been the deadliest yet for international forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, with at least 221 troops dying in the first nine months of 2008, most of them Americans.
Bloodbath after bailout blocked AUSTRALIA`S market has been sucked into the vortex of global financial crisis after the Bush bailout plan for Wall St failed.
Yeah because we all remember what happened last time an Afghan warlord offered a foreign army `safe passage` out of Afghanistan...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar_Khan"Elphinstone accepted a safe-conduct for his force and about 12,000 associated refugees to flee to India; they were ambushed and massacred. It was claimed in at least one set of British war memoirs that, during the retreat, Akbar Khan could be heard alternately commanding his men, in Persian to desist from, and in Pushtu to continue, firing."
Posted by: allan of perth 8:57pm today
adam (com 2.)if the coalition of the willing, yes thats us mate, america as well,i think we are dreaming big time if were thinking were going to win this one mate.russia has been there and got whipped badly,and throughout the ages heaps of people and country`s have tried and failed,big time! they are seasoned guerilla fighters from hundreds of years ago.fact,we will never win peace over in the middle east,never.find oil eleswhere or go to another energy source,and leave the middle east.
Posted by: j man. of wa 8:55pm today
Fredm - Maybe the media has trouble getting passed the Iranian President's comments about wiping Israel off the face of the earth, their support for suicide bombers and terrorism in general.For that reason it might not focus on it 'helping poorer nations'.
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