12.00 pm
JALALABAD - Afghanistan's ruling Taleban says militant fugitive Osama bin Laden could be handed to a neutral country for trial if the United States provided sufficient evidence.
Maulvi Abdul Kabir, number two in the Taleban, urged the United States -- which today began an eighth night of air raids on Taleban positions -- to remember the days when Afghanistan and the United States were allied in a holy war against Soviet occupation, and to hold talks.
Washington lost little time in rejecting the offer, which appeared to edge slightly away from earlier demands that any trial be held in an Islamic country.
Asked if Saudi-born millionaire bin Laden could be handed to the United States, Kabir told a news conference:
"It can be negotiated provided the US gives us evidence and the Taleban are assured that the country is neutral and will not be influenced by the United States," he said in the eastern city of Jalalabad.
"If the Taleban are provided with evidence, then negotiations can start."
His audience of reporters were the first foreign nationals to be let into Taleban-controlled Afghanistan since last month's suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
However, he declined to specify which country could be acceptable as a site for the trial of bin Laden.
"We can't identify the country unless we are given the evidence against Osama," he said.
White House spokeswoman Anne Womack reiterated that talks were out of the question. "The president has made it clear there will be no negotiations," she said in Washington.
Kabir turned to history to appeal to the United States to begin talks, remembering the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when the United States backed the Afghan mujahideen, or holy warriors, in their war of resistance.
"Why is American not reviving the time of jihadi (holy war) with Afghanistan by starting talks?" he said.
"If there is any difference between the West and the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan (Taleban), we are ready to sit with them and resolve them," he said.
"We do not intend to endanger the security of others," he added, in unusually conciliatory remarks.
However, he dismissed US charges that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network had set up terrorist camps across Afghanistan.
"There are no terrorist camps in Afghanistan," he said. "There are mujahideen centers throughout the country that were established 20 years ago, and if the US calls these centres of terrorism, then there are terrorist camps in the entire country," he said.
The death toll from the first week of attacks was well over 200 he said, but stressed that only two Taleban fighters had been killed and two wounded in the attacks and the rest of the casualties were civilians.
Earlier, Taleban officials showed reporters a village in remote hills outside Jalalabad where they said up to 200 civilians had been killed in bombing raids last week.
They said an unspecified number had died in a similar misdirected attack west of the capital before dawn.
Taleban officials took the international reporters from Pakistan to Khorum village near Jalalabad where they said up to 200 people may have been killed in a bomb strike last week.
"I ask America not to kill us," pleaded resident Hussain Khan, who said he lost four children in the raid and survived only by racing out of the house when he first heard the plane.
The stench of death enveloped the village. In the rubble of one house, the remains of an arm stuck out from beneath a pile of bricks. A leg had been uncovered nearby.
Villagers were still digging through the rubble for bodies today. Six fresh graves could be seen nearby.
It was not clear what happened to the other bodies officials say they recovered. Muslims generally strictly observe Koranic requirements that the dead are buried before the next sunset.
- REUTERS
Map: Opposing forces in the war against terror