Afghanistan's government wants an end to bombing raids, saying Osama bin Laden has probably fled to Pakistan and his fighters are scattered, even as foreign security troops prepare for full deployment in the capital Kabul.
In the battered city, Afghan fighters of the Northern Alliance that swept the Taliban out of the city and UN-mandated foreign security troops prepared to hold their first joint military exercises, officials said.
Interim leader Hamid Karzai has welcomed the force, as have several commanders, tribal elders and ordinary Afghans eager to have international troops on the scene to prevent a return to the warlord conflicts of the early 1990s. The Defence Ministry has been less enthusiastic.
However, Defence Minister Mohammad Fahim said a day earlier that terms of the force's deployment had been agreed with a British general, with 3,000 foreign troops to be allowed into the country.
Apparently eager to divert attention, Mr Fahim also said the world's most wanted man had probably left Afghanistan for the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, and urged the end soon to US bombing raids blamed for killing hundreds of civilians since October 7.
With the destruction of the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, there was little further need for US bombing, Mr Fahim said in the highest-level suggestion so far that it was time to end the aerial strikes.
Most hideouts of the Taliban and bin Laden have been bombed to bits, but the air raids have continued and stray US bombs have been blamed for scores of civilian deaths in recent days.
"After fleeing from Tora Bora there is a strong probability that Osama is in Peshawar," Mr Fahim said.
"Osama is out of our control. To a large extent it depends on Pakistan. America can pursue him with the help of the Pakistani government," he said.
Tora Bora is a mountainous region in eastern Afghanistan, riddled with caves, and was thought to be the last redoubt of bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and perhaps for the Saudi-born militant millionaire himself.