Kandahar, Afghanistan ? The Taliban’s former supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, is believed still in Afghanistan – holed up in remote and rugged central mountains, a Kandahar provincial government spokesman said Saturday.

“We have had certain indications” that Omar is in the northwest of central Uruzgan province, said Yusuf Pashtun, spokesman for Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha.

Winter weather, rough terrain, bad communications and a shortage of precise intelligence all are slowing the effort to pinpoint his whereabouts further, Pashtun said.

Uruzgan province is a place of jagged mountains and canyons cut by roads that are broken, gullied tracks.

Taliban and al-Qaida are believed still in hiding in the province’s mountains, and Taliban and Taliban sympathizers are thick in some of its towns.

Pashtun said as far as he knew the search now was concentrating on gathering tips – not searching on the ground.

Omar escaped from his headquarters of Kandahar before the city fell in December.

Pashtun also said negotiations were continuing with some senior Taliban leaders, after the Feb. 8 surrender of former Taliban Foreign Minister Mullah Abdul Wakil Muttawakil. He declined to say who or where the officials were, or how the negotiations were being conducted.

Taliban officials appear to favor giving up directly to Americans, Pashtun said. Khairullah Khrerkhawa, a former Taliban governor of Herat arrested as he crossed the Pakistan border Friday, had been heading to the U.S.-controlled air base at Kandahar at the time, the Kandahar official said.

Any Taliban who surrendered to the Afghan interim government would do so with the understanding they be turned over to the U.S.-led coalition here, Pashtun said.

Afghans and Pakistani officials, meanwhile, had reached agreement on the handling of Pakistanis arrested in Afghanistan after responding to calls to join the holy war against the United States, the spokesman said.

Pakistanis who had not committed “any actions against the Afghan people” would be released from jails, he said. He did not say exactly who would qualify, and said neither Pakistani nor Afghan officials gave a number for the detainees in recent talks in Islamabad.