The Taliban abandoned its last stronghold of Kandahar today, but efforts to capture supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar have proved fruitless.
Under a deal negotiated yesterday with Mr Hamid Karzai, designated leader of the new Afghan interim government, the Taliban in Kandahar turned in their guns to a group of local figures led by Mullah Naqibullah, a former Mujahideen commander.
Mr Karzai has changed his earlier position on offering an amnesty to Omar, and said today he must be brought to justice.
"I have no idea where Mullah Omar is, but of course I want to arrest him. I have given him every chance to denounce terrorism and now the time has run out. He is an absconder, a fugitive from justice," he said.
He told CNNthe Taliban no longer held Kandahar and that, according to his information, the Taliban authority is effectively finished.
South of Kandahar, Pashtun tribal leaders took over the border district of Spin Boldak from the Taliban, whose forces headed out westwards into the Registan desert, witnesses said.
Anti-Taliban forces said they had captured the main base of Osama bin Laden in the rugged Tora Bora mountains of eastern Afghanistan but had failed to find the al-Qaeda leader.