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Osama bin Laden
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Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, wanted by the United States as a prime suspect in last week's attacks in the United States, is missing, Abul Hai Mutmaen, spokesman for Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, told reporters today.
Mullah Omar, spiritual leader of the purist Taliban movement that controls Afghanistan, had approved a decision last week by Afghanistan's most senior clerics to recommend that bin Laden be persuaded to leave the country, he said.
"We have still not been able to deliver the clerics' message to him because we could not find him", Mutmaen said by telephone from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
Asked if the world's most wanted man was still in Afghanistan, he said: "I cannot say".
American officials have cast doubt on claims by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban that it has been unable to locate suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden for the past two days.
They say the Taliban may be trying to elude President George W Bush's demands that they hand over bin Laden or face retribution. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says the Taliban claim that bin Laden is missing "is simply not credible".
US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Fox News: "We're not going to be deterred by comments that he may be missing. We don't simply believe it."
When asked if the Bush administration thought the Taliban were telling the truth about bin Laden's disappearance, Ms Rice replied: "Well, we're going to find out."
Meanwhile a massive US-led strikeforce took up positions in countries surrounding Afghanistan today as Washington rewarded its key allies and speeded preparations for a strike against Islamic terrorists.
The United States lifted sanctions imposed on India and Pakistan after their 1998 nuclear tests and won Russian backing to deploy forces in Central Asia within striking distance of Afghan militant bases, officials said.
With a US military counter-strike against Islamic militants based in Afghanistan now highly likely, the Taliban militia responded with defiance and again refused to hand over suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.
"There is no change in our stand," said Abdul Hai Mutmaen, spokesman for Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
"The US demand is not acceptable to any Afghan Muslim and we are also not ready to accept it."
The Islamic regime's defiance, reported by the Afghan Islamic Press agency, appeared to make a US strike against bin Laden, his al-Qaeda terror network and Afghan forces inevitable as US and British forces massed around the region.
US President George W Bush holds bin Laden responsible for the September 11th terrorist attacks on US cities which left more than 6,800 dead and has made his capture the key early goal of a global "war against terrorism".
Reports from Kabul said that Taliban leaders had distributed thousands of Kalashnikov assault rifles to civilians in expectation of an attack, but the noose was tightening around them as a US-led coalition gathered strength.
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his approval to US plans to launch attacks from bases in former Soviet Central Asian republics, US officials said.
Moscow's decision came as President Emomali Rakhmonov of Tajikistan said his country, which borders Afghanistan, would support the US effort and Uzbek officials said US warplanes and attack helicopters were already in Uzbekistan.
The Pentagon would not confirm or deny the report.
Meanwhile intense fighting raged in northern Afghanistan as opposition forces under warlord Abdul Rashid Dostam claimed he had cut off a Taliban supply route leading to the town of Mazar-i-Sharif near the Uzbek and Tajik borders.
Opposition forces have pledged to work with the United States in the event of an attack and military experts have suggested that the Mazar-i-Sharif airfield could be a key target for capture.
AFP