KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, faced with a U.S. ultimatum to hand over Osama bin Laden or go to war, on Friday ignored recommendations from clerics and said it was up to the Saudi-born millionaire militant to leave their land.The government's negative response to Thursday's recommendatios from 1,000 senior Afghan clerics to urge the world's most wanted man to leave underscored reports of differences emerging in the purist Islamic movement that seized power in Kabul in 1996.
``We are not ready to hand over Osama bin Laden without evidence,'' Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef told a news conference. (photo)
Thursday's recommendation from the clerics was ``a suggestion ... and not a decision by a judge,'' he said.
The United States has named bin Laden, 44, as a prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington which killed more than 6,500 people. It has threatened Kabul with retaliation if it fails to hand him over.
Negotiations were not an option, a White House spokesman said.
Afghan sources have long reported factional rifts within the hardline Taliban movement. One sign was that its spiritual leader, the reclusive Mullah Mohammad Omar, had failed to name a successor to the cabinet chairman who died several months ago.
It initially appeared that the one-eyed Mullah Omar, known as Amir-ul-Momineen (Leader of the Faithful), would follow the clerics' guidance and ask bin Laden to leave the country.
This now seems in doubt.
The clerics' fatwa would have ended his five-year-long protection under a tradition of the Pashtuns -- Afghanistan's dominant ethnic group -- to guard guests at the cost of their lives. But bin Laden's status as a ``guest'' appeared intact.