Alliance fighters are waiting for orders
An American spokesman in Pakistan, Kenton Keith, said there were about 12,000 Taleban in Kunduz, including some of their best forces, along with some 3,000 foreign volunteers.
The alliance says any amnesty would apply only to Afghans. The US government has made it clear it wants to see the foreign fighters captured or killed.
The alliance says that foreign fighters loyal to Osama Bin Laden - mainly Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis - are preventing the Taleban from leaving Kunduz.
Click here for map of the battlegrounds
General Daoud, the alliance commander in the region, said the foreign fighters had killed more than 450 Taleban who were thinking of surrendering, including a commander.
Guns silent
General Abdul Rashid Dostum speaking from the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, told Reuters that he was expecting two Taleban commanders from Kunduz to discuss surrender terms.
He said the plan was to grant an amnesty to local Taleban troops who surrender to Northern Alliance forces.
But foreign fighters would not get the same
treatment, the general - an ethnic Uzbek - added.
"We will deal with the foreigners according to
international laws and human rights conventions," he said.
BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, on the front lines outside Kunduz, says refugees are streaming out of the city, which has been pounded for days by American B-52 bombers.
Refugees who have reached safety say hardline Taleban troops inside Kunduz are refusing to allow more civilians to leave the city.
General Dostum said Northern Alliance guns trained on Taleban front lines outside Kunduz had fallen silent as talks continued.
He named the Taleban commanders who wanted to discuss surrender as Mullah Dadullah, former commander in Mazar-e-Sharif, and Mullah Fazal, former commander in Takhar province bordering Kunduz.
Hunt for Bin Laden
The alliance's Interior Minister Younis Qanooni told AFP news agency that some of the fighters in Kunduz had requested safe passage to the United Arab Emirates and the southern Taleban bastion of Kandahar.
But US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said he wants them taken prisoner or killed.
"Any idea that those people... should end up in some sort of a negotiation which would allow them to leave the country and go off and destabilise other countries and engage in terrorist attacks on the United States is something I would certainly do everything I could to prevent," he said.
Mr Rumsfeld also made it clear he does not want Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who is believed to be in Kandahar, to be allowed to negotiate an escape from Afghanistan.
Our diplomatic correspondent, Barnaby Mason, says the Americans are pursuing a single-minded and ferocious hunt for the people they believe responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington.
Washington hopes that people in Afghanistan will respond to the offer of a $25m reward for the capture of Bin Laden - an offer the US announced to Afghans via radio broadcasts and through leaflets dropped from the air.
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