Taliban gives message to bin Laden to leave

By Laura King ~ The Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- After days of saying it couldn't locate Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan's Taliban government said Thursday it had delivered a week-old message to America's prime suspect in the terror attacks on the United States, asking him to leave the country voluntarily.

The nation's top clerics recommended Sept. 20 that bin Laden be asked to leave Afghanistan, where he has sheltered for the past five years. The United States says he has used Afghanistan as his headquarters for a far-flung, loosely linked international terror network known as al-Qaida, or "the base."

President Bush has demanded the Taliban surrender bin Laden or share his fate, raising expectations of an American-led military action against Afghanistan, though none has yet materialized.

"Osama has now received the (clerics') recommendations" that he depart Afghanistan, the Taliban's ambassador in neighboring Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said Thursday. It marked the first time since the Sept. 11 terror attacks that the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic movement that rules Afghanistan, indicated they knew bin Laden's location or how to communicate with him.

As the confrontation over bin Laden has hardened, fears have grown over the safety of eight foreign aid workers, including two Americans, accused last month of preaching Christianity in Afghanistan. On Thursday, diplomats were notified that their trial, halted in the wake of the terror strikes, would resume Saturday.

John Mercer, the father of American defendant Heather Mercer, said the planned resumption was an "encouraging" development. The aid workers' Pakistani lawyer Asif Ali, who is schooled in sharia, or Islamic law, said he would "do my best to defend the accused."

The eight -- two Americans, four Germans, and two Australians -- are employed by German-based Shelter Now International, a Christian aid organization. They were arrested along with 16 Afghan workers on charges of proselytizing, a serious offense in a country under Islamic rule.

While the United States has sought to marshal support for a coalition targeting bin Laden, new attention has focused on a ragtag opposition alliance that has struggled for years to wrest key territory from Taliban troops.

The anti-government guerrillas have reported no major battlefield gains, but in the rugged valleys of northern Afghanistan, fighting has grown fiercer in recent days. One forward patrol, accompanied by an Associated Press Television News crew, pushed to within four miles of Kabul before falling back, exchanging fire with Taliban fighters.

The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, warned the rebels not to look to the United States to help them topple his government.

"Those Afghans who want to seize power with the help of America are just like those fools who tried to stay in power with the help of the Russian army," he said in a message distributed Thursday by the Afghan Islamic Press. "If America interferes in Afghanistan, then it will be no different from Russia."

Even while it keeps up fiery calls for a jihad, or holy war, if America attacks, the Taliban opened the door Thursday to the possibility of outside mediation, saying they would be willing to receive civil rights leader Jesse Jackson as an envoy.

Jackson said he was invited by the Taliban; the Taliban said it was Jackson who approached them, but they were willing to accept his offer to "mediate between the Taliban and America."

In any event, Bush administration officials indicated they would discourage such a trip. And Francesc Vendrell, head of the U.N. special mission for Afghanistan, told reporters in Islamabad: "I'm afraid that when it comes to the issue of bin Laden and the al-Qaida network, the time for negotiations with the Taliban on this issue is past."