Pakistani security forces captured one of the Taliban's top leaders hours after US vice president Dick Cheney's unannounced visit to Pakistan this week, a senior security official and Taliban sources said.
The sources said that Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, the third most senior member of the Taliban's leadership council, was arrested late on Monday in the southwestern city of Quetta.
His capture would mark the first Pakistani arrest of a senior leader of the Islamist militia since it was driven from power in Afghanistan in 2001 and thousands of its fighters fled into Pakistan.
The Bush administration is facing a wave of scepticism over Pakistan's role as an ally in the war on terrorism.
Mr Cheney had asked Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to do more to stop al-Qaeda rebuilding from safe havens in Pakistani tribal lands and step up efforts to thwart a spring offensive by the Taliban against Afghan and NATO troops. The New York Times carried a report on its website, saying US officials in Washington had confirmed Akhund's arrest.
Today's edition of Dawn, a leading Pakistani daily, ran a front-page story, again sourced to an unnamed official, with a headline reading: "Mullah Omar's deputy Obaidullah captured". Pakistani government and military spokesmen said they had no knowledge of the arrest.
Taliban sources, speaking on satellite telephones from undisclosed locations, said Akhund was caught at the home of a relative in the Baluchistan provincial capital.
They said two other leaders had been arrested in Quetta this week. Pakistani security officials said five suspects had been detained midweek, but their identities were not confirmed. Germany's conservative Die Welt daily, in an advance copy of a story to be published on Saturday, quoted "an observer" as saying Akhund had already been released. "I have just had coffee with the Mullah," the observer said.