Taleban had announced Thursday the capture of the 46 years-old Abdol Haq, but it was only on early Friday morning that the official news agency Bakhtar (East) announced his execution, "hours after being captured".

Prominent Afghan analysts told Iran Press Service that the execution of Abdol Haq is "good news" for the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, as he had entered Afghanistan with the aim of capturing the Capital Kabol before it falls to the hands of the Alliance.

Haq’s family in Pakistan said he had been apprehended on a peace mission.

Pakistan is adamantly opposed to the Northern Alliance, formed mostly by Afghan Tajik and Uzbek minorities and supported by some Muslim Sh’ia-based groups backed by neighbouring Iran.

The opposition, which had been expected to try to sweep south toward Kabul when the U.S. bombing started, acknowledged that its plans to capture the war-ravaged city were on hold.

Before entering Kabul we would like to see a broad-based government'', Mohammad Yunes Qanooni, Interior minister in the Alliance, told Reuters.

Earlier this month, Haq had criticised the US air strikes on Taleban targets, telling AFP they were damaging his efforts to persuade "good" Taleban to rally to the opposition cause.

But other, mostly Western analysts said the execution would deal a serious blow to efforts led by the United States, the United Nations and the European Union to build a credible, broad-based coalition to rule the country if and when a U.S.-led military operations topples the ruling Taleban.

Abdol Haq, a famous mujahid, or holy warrior, who lost a foot in the 1980s war against Soviet occupation, entered Afghanistan on a mission to rally Pashtoon tribesmen against the Islamic fundamentalist Taleban and for the former King, Zaher Shah, who the United States and the European Union are promoting as the figurehead leader of a future government.

"This happened on the basis of the verdict of the Ulema (Muslim clerics) that anyone who assists the United States is liable to be killed", he confirmed.

There was no independent confirmation of the claim. Earlier, the Taleban said they had captured Haq despite attempts by U.S. attack helicopters to protect him as he fled on horseback.

"We had secretly surrounded the place for two days where Haq was hiding with his supporters", said the spokesman.

"U.S. helicopters bombed the Taleban to enable Haq to escape but we were able to capture him when he tried to leave at 2:30 this morning", he said from Jalalabad, quoted by French news agency AFP and Reuters of England.

AIP said the Taleban were congratulating each other over the arrest, which they consider a "major success".

After the collapse of a Moscow-backed government in Kabul in 1992, Abdol Haq was made security minister in the interim muhahedin government, but he quickly pulled out of politics to set up an import-export company in the Persian Gulf and a home in London.

"Our appeal to the Afghans and peace-loving people is that they should put pressure on the Taleban not to harm this man who was making peace efforts'', his brother Haji Mohammad Din Haq told a news conference in the north-western Pakistani city of Peshawar, before the news of the execution.

The United States launched the assault on Afghanistan almost a month ago to punish the Taleban for sheltering Saudi-born Osama Ben Laden, the prime mastermind of the September 11 suicide hijacking attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C..

This week a meeting of 1,500 Afghan exiles in Peshawar endorsed Haq's strategy of wooing the Pashtuns and called for an end to the U.S.-led military offensive.

Another prominent pro-king exile, a former deputy foreign minister named Hamid Karzai, was also inside Afghanistan trying to convince fellow Pashtoons to back Zaher Shah.