FWD: Afghan opposition leader dead

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

Afghan opposition leader is dead, French foreign 
minister says;
spokesman denies it

09/14/2001 


PARIS (AP) Afghanistan's military opposition leader 
Ahmed Shah Massood
was assassinated in an attack by suicide bombers, the 
French foreign
minister said Friday, but a Massood spokesman denied it. 

"This assassination fills me with very great sadness," 
Foreign
Minister Hubert Vedrine said in a statement. 

A spokesman for Massood said the French statement was 
untrue. 

"The reports about the death are false," said Dr. 
Abdullah, who uses
only one name. "He is in critical condition, but he is 
not dead." 

Earlier Friday, Muhamad Salekh Registani, an Afghan 
opposition envoy
in Moscow, said Massood had slipped into a coma for the 
third time
since being wounded. 

In the attack Sunday, two men posing as journalists 
detonated a bomb
that may have been hidden in a television camera. The 
blast in
northern Afghanistan killed both bombers and one of 
Massood's
spokesmen. 

Massood was taken to Tajikistan, where he was 
hospitalized. 

Massood's fate since the bombing has been shrouded in 
mystery.
Initially the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass reported 
that he was
killed in the attack. 

On Thursday, the Afghan opposition forces named Gen. Muhammad Fahim,
an active leader of the opposition since 1973, to temporarily replace
Massood. 

The Taliban rules about 95 percent of Afghanistan, with 
Massood's
alliance in control of the remaining 5 percent, mostly 
in the north. 

The opposition is a fractured collection of groups who 
fought each
other when they ruled much of Afghanistan for four years 
until the
Taliban took control in September 1996. The opposition's 
deposed
government still holds Afghanistan's seat in the United 
Nations and
operates several embassies.






Kurt-Werner Pörtner