ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) - Pakistan tried and failed Friday to persuade Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to surrender Osama bin Laden and avert a possible U.S.-led military strike against their war-battered country.One Pakistani representative said he believed the Taliban's top leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was ``not afraid of war'' with America.
Against the backdrop yet another unsuccessful diplomatic initiative, a senior administration official in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed for the first time that U.S. special forces had already been conducting scouting missions in Afghanistan, likely in preparation for military action.
Pakistan - which supports the United States in the confrontation, but is also the world's only country to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan's government - sent a delegation of senior Islamic religious leaders friendly to the Taliban, together with its own intelligence chief, Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, to make a case to Omar that he must show flexibility or risk U.S. retaliation.
In daylong talks in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the Taliban's home base, participants on both sides said Omar refused even to discuss bin Laden, who is accused by the United States of masterminding the Sept. 11 terror strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The United States has demanded that Afghanistan surrender bin Laden. The Taliban refuse to do so.
A Pakistani religious leader taking part in the talks quoted the blunt-spoken Taliban leader as saying his stance on bin Laden had not changed. It was America that must abandon its ``stubbornness,'' he said, according to Mufti Mohammed Jamil, leader of a religious Pakistani political party.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A Pakistani boy holds a poster of a Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden during a pro-Taliban rally in front of the Faysal Mosque in Islamabad, September 28, 2001. Pro-Taliban Pakistani Islamic groups, worried about possible U.S. attacks on Afghanistan, called for more nationwide protests. (Pawel Kopczynski/Reuters)