The U.S. Defense Department is strongly rejecting allegations that U.S. forces beat Afghan detainees who were taken into custody and later released in a raid in southern Afghanistan last month.

The Washington Post newspaper reported Monday that U.S. soldiers treated the detainees so harshly that two men lost consciousness during the beatings.

In Washington Tuesday, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, rejected the report, saying investigators found that none of the 27 detainees had been subject to beatings or rough treatment.

Meanwhile, an Afghan official says about 15 former Taleban members are willing to surrender and are holding indirect talks with Afghan authorities.

A spokesman for the governor of Kandahar province, Khalid Pashtoon, refused to identify any of them, but said it may take up to four weeks to negotiate the surrender.

Kandahar officials say they played a key role in last week's surrender of former Taleban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakil, who is being questioned by U.S. forces.

In Kabul, German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping urged interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai to specifically outline how the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan should be expanded.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a U.S. soldier suffered non life-threatening injuries when a landmine exploded on a well-traveled path south of the Kandahar airport.

Some information for this report provided by Reuters.

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