BONN/KABUL (REUTERS) — Rival Afghan factions meeting in Germany will to try to finalize names for an interim administration on Monday as anti-Taliban forces surrounded the militia in a snake-like squeeze.

With the U.S. military declaring the battle for Kandahar city may be nearing culmination, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington believed Osama bin Laden was in southeastern Afghanistan and it was just a matter of time before he was found and the Taliban were defeated.

But any battle for Kandahar is likely to be bloody, with their spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar repeatedly ordering his forces to fight to the last breath.

Kandahar is the powerbase for the Taliban, which has been sheltering bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant Washington blames for the September suicide attacks on the United States that killed about 3,900 people.

At political talks near Bonn, the United Nations prodded Afghan delegates to finalize a post-Taliban administration after two decades of war, but diplomats cautioned it could take days to seal a final deal.

In one key advance, the two largest groups at the talks agreed to put forward the name of a former Afghan justice minister to serve as the head of the interim administration.

On the ground, U.S. bombers pounded targets near Kandahar, and ethnic Pashtun fighters attacked the southern city’s airport.

“Fierce fighting is going on to the south of the airport,” an aide to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha told Reuters late Sunday.

A tribal spokesman said earlier that Pashtun forces had met strong resistance from hundreds of bin Laden’s Arab fighters entrenched there.

Hardened foreign troops, including Arabs and Chechens loyal to bin Laden, are expected to make a desperate last stand in Kandahar, raising the specter of wild street battles.

The U.S. Central Command, responding to reports by local officials that bombing runs had killed civilians near Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad, said it had struck only at military targets of the Taliban and bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.

At the southern Afghan airstrip near Kandahar where U.S. Marines have been massing, a senior Marine officer said he had expected the city to fall last week but the Taliban were still in control.

“But you have a lot of forces at play. Opposition groups coming from the north down, from the southeast up, and us coming potentially from where we are,” Major James Higgins told reporters at the base, seized Nov. 25.

“Everywhere the Taliban is looking . . . a lot of pressure, kind of a snake squeezing in on them, and hopefully we can get them out of there in the near future,” Higgins said, adding that the battle appeared to be reaching a “culmination point.”

Post-Taliban government begins to take shape

At the political talks in Bonn, the dominant Northern Alliance, which now controls most of Afghanistan, and three exile factions have agreed to the outline of a power-sharing government during six days of intense talks, but are still haggling over its 25 to 30 members.

Billions of dollars in reconstruction aid rest on a deal, a carrot the United Nations and big-donor countries are dangling as delegates scurry between bargaining sessions in a top-security hotel outside Bonn.

Some diplomats following the talks hoped for a final agreement by Monday, although others said the negotiations could take several more days.

On Sunday, the two largest delegations — the Northern Alliance and representatives of Afghanistan’s former King Zahir Shah — put forward the name of former justice minister Abdul Sattar Sirat to serve as the country’s new premier.

Sirat, an ethnic Uzbek and aide to Zahir Shah, has been active in recent years promoting efforts to have the 87-year-old ex-monarch return to help rebuild the country.

If approved by all the groups in Bonn, Sirat would head the small interim administration charged with starting reconstruction work until a Loya Jirga, or traditional grand assembly, could appoint a longer-term government.

A draft agreement under consideration at the talks calls for the interim administration to operate for six months, followed by a transitional government for 18 months and eventual elections.

The draft agreement, obtained by Reuters, also requires that Afghanistan respect human and especially women’s rights and allow the United Nations to investigate violations.

An American Taliban?

The Marines based at the desert airstrip have made no immediate move on Kandahar as they build up their arsenal and troop numbers.

Witnesses arriving at the Pakistani border from Kandahar said they had seen no anti-Taliban forces inside the city, but that combat-ready al Qaeda fighters were there in force.

Powell said U.S. officials did not know exactly where bin Laden was “but we think that he is still in Afghanistan and there is reason to believe that he is in the southern and eastern part of the country.”

Newsweek magazine reported a foreign fighter of a different kind on Sunday. It said one of the surviving Taliban fighters from a revolt by prisoners at a northern fortress was a “white, educated-sounding, apparently middle-class American” who said he was a native of Washington and had converted to Islam at the age of 16.

The 20-year-old man, who identified himself only as Abdul Hamid, said he went to Pakistan to study the Koran and decided to help the Taliban because they were “the only government that actually provides Islamic law,” Newsweek said.

Marine Major Brad Lowell, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, confirmed “a man who calls himself a U.S. citizen” was in the custody of U.S. forces and was being treated for injuries sustained in the Qala-i-Janghi uprising.

Hamid was identified by his parents as John Phillip Walker Lindh, of Northern California, according to the Newsweek Web site.

Hundreds of Taliban fighters died in the revolt, which was ended using U.S. air strikes, Northern Alliance tanks and U.S. and British special forces.

The body of an American CIA officer who died in the fortress revolt — the first U.S. combat fatality in the Afghan campaign — was flown home Sunday.