Taliban says it knows where bin Laden is

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Under threat of U.S. military strikes, Afghanistan's hard-line Taliban rulers said explicitly for the first time Sunday that Osama bin Laden is still in the country and they know where his hide-out is.

But the president of Pakistan, which has been appealing to the Taliban to resolve the crisis with the United States, said hopes were "very dim" that the Taliban would surrender bin Laden. Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar took a hard stance in a radio address Sunday, telling Afghans not to fear U.S. strikes, because "Americans don't have the courage to come here."

Fierce fighting

Meanwhile, fierce fighting was reported in the jagged mountains of northern Afghanistan. Rebel guerrillas said they had seized a district from Taliban troops, while the Taliban said at least a dozen opposition soldiers were killed and several hurt in a blast at a base north of Kabul.

In the Afghan capital, the trial of eight foreign aid workers charged with preaching Christianity resumed for the first time since the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States. The top judge in the trial, Noor Mohammed Saqib, told the workers -- who include two Americans -- the threat of U.S. military action would not affect their case.

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Taliban have given varying accounts of their dealings with bin Laden, the United States' top suspect in the attacks. U.S. officials say bin Laden, who has been sheltered in Afghanistan since 1996, presides over a terrorist network known as al-Qaida, or "the base."

Initially, the Afghan rulers said they didn't know where to find bin Laden. Then, last week, they said they had been able to deliver a message to him, a week-old request from the country's top clerics that he leave Afghanistan voluntarily.

On Sunday, the Afghan ambassador in neighboring Pakistan said bin Laden was hidden away for his own protection at a site inside Afghanistan known only to top Taliban security officials.

"He's in Afghanistan. He is under our control," the envoy, Abdul Salam Zaeef, told a journalists in Islamabad. "He's in a place which cannot be located by anyone."

Zaeef said the Taliban, who have rejected a series of appeals to hand over bin Laden and avert a military confrontation, were willing to talk. "We are thinking of negotiation," he said, adding that if direct evidence against bin Laden were produced, "it might change things."