He said: “We have agreed to surrender weapons not to Hamid Karzai but to tribal elders. Mullah Omar has taken the decision for the welfare of the people, to avoid casualties and to save the life and dignity of Afghans.” Asked about the fate of Mr Omar, he replied: “His life will be saved and he will be allowed to live with dignity … He has worked for the people of Afghanistan and he is not guilty.” In London, Mr Blair said: “This is a very fast-moving situation. It seems that the final collapse of the Taliban is now upon them.” Mr Blair refused to comment on what was rapidly emerging last night as a possible stumbling block to the surrender deal ­ the fate of Mr Omar. He said that he had nothing to add to what the White House had already said. The Bush administration has long made clear that it will not tolerate a deal that would grant amnesty to the man it holds at least partly responsible for the 11 September attacks Yesterday, Mr Rumsfeld said the position had not changed. “We have expressed very firmly what our previous views are and what our goals are,” he said.

“I have not seen anything or heard anything that [suggests] anyone is negotiating anything that is contrary to what our interests are.” The President’s spokesman said that Mr Bush believed “very strongly that those who harbour terrorists need to be brought to justice”. Asked what that meant in respect to Mr Omar, he said: “The President has left that undefined.” With Kandahar airport reportedly in opposition control last night, the hunt continued in eastern Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden and members of his al-Qa’ida network. Opposition forces said they had captured a number of hills in the Tora Bora region south of Jalalabad and killed 22 foreign fighters loyal to Mr bin Laden.Mohammed Amin, a spokesman for Hazrat Ali, the local commander leading the hunt for Mr bin Laden, said the Saudi dissident may have fled. “We found the bodies of 22 foreign supporters of Osama in a couple of caves and areas which we took overnight and yesterday afternoon,” he said.

“We believe that Osama may have already left Tora Bora for the Spin Ghar mountains.” In London, Mr Blair’s spokesman said the Government was receiving persistent reports that Ayman Zawahri, Mr bin Laden’s deputy, had been killed. The Independent reported earlier this week that he had been killed or wounded by American bombing.Meanwhile, two Afghan leaders condemned the deal done earlier this week in Bonn to appoint an interim administration. The warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, whose forces dominate much of the north, said his ethnic Uzbek faction was not fairly represented. “We announce our boycott of this government and will not go to Kabul until there is a proper government in place,” he said, adding that he would deny the new government access to the north, where Afghanistan’s oil and gas are located.The Pashtun spiritual leader Sayed Ahmad Gailani also said that “injustices have been committed in the distribution of ministries”.. In the Tora Bora valley of the White Mountains, pick-up trucks, Land Rovers and mortars abound, but the last thing you would expect to find is a bicycle. It was a dangerous moment, at the start of the second day of the battle against al-Qa’ida guerrillas, but the soldiers of Halim Shah, the front-line commander, agreed: they saw bicycles, children’s bicycles – with children riding them.”They ran away with the Arabs, and escaped to the upper caves,” said Commander Shah, from his vantage point two miles behind the front line “But there are families there.

Our men have seen them riding their bikes in the caves.”It is a grim thought in an already grim battle: somewhere up there, in the freezing heights of the White Mountains, beneath the tank shells of the mujahedin and the 1000lb bombs of the American B-52s, are women and young children.And they are on the run. We only have the mujahedin’s word for it, but by the account of soldiers freshly returned from the fighting, Commander Halim’s men had a good day They have thrown 2,500 fighters into the battle. For the first time, they captured part of the network of caves in which al-Qa’ida fighters have been sheltering – having gained and then lost them to a counter-attack early in the morning.But this is a ragged conflict – more of a series of guerrillas skirmishes at shifting flash-points than a conventional battle with a fixed front line. The gains of today may not count for very much tomorrow.The battle began at 7am when the mujahedin reached the caves, only to be quickly beaten back. It was then that the children were glimpsed but, by the time the caves were securely captured at 11.30am, all signs of life had gone.”These are the lowest of all the caves,” said a young mujahedin named Lala Khan. “The entrances are very narrow, so that only one man can squeeze in, but inside it’s very wide and dark. Two of our men went in, and brought out some heavy machine guns and ammunition, but what else is there we don’t know.