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| JALALABAD, Afghanistan –– A senior Taliban leader said Sunday that the Islamic militia would be willing to hand over Osama bin Laden to a third country if the United States halts the bombing of Afghanistan and provides evidence against him. President Bush quickly rejected the offer. "The president has been very clear, there will be no negotiations," White House spokeswoman Anne Womack said. Washington has repeatedly rejected any negotiations or conditions on its demands that the Taliban surrender bin Laden and his al-Qaida terror network... Kabir said that if the United States gave evidence bin Laden was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and halted the bombing, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country" – a country, he added, that would never "come under pressure from the United States." "If America were to step back from the current policy, then we could negotiate," he said. "Then we could discuss which third country." Before the start of the air campaign, the Taliban had demanded evidence of bin Laden's involvement in the attack and had offered to try him before an Islamic court inside Afghanistan – proposals that the United States promptly rejected. Kabir's offer came a day after the Taliban's supreme leader rebuffed a "second chance" given by Bush for the Islamic militia to surrender bin Laden to the United States. In a blistering statement, Mullah Mohammed Omar said there was no move to "hand over anyone" and accused the United States of killing Afghans. The United States launched the airstrikes Oct. 7 after weeks of pressing the Taliban to give up bin Laden unconditionally. |
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| President George W. Bush on Sunday rejected an offer from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban to discuss turning over Islamic militant Osama bin Laden if the United States stops air strikes against Afghanistan. ''There is no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty,'' Bush told reporters as he returned to the White House from his Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. |
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| Bush responded: "There's no need to discuss innocence or guilt. We know he's guilty. … Turn him over.” Some U.S. officials had doubts about the sincerity of Kabir’s offer as well as the ability of the Taliban to deliver bin Laden. But according to Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s: “We never heard what they were trying to say. We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.' … I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck.'' [Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2001] The President’s Oct. 14 decision to continue the bombing closed the door on any possibility of a peaceful, legal and relatively rapid resolution of the shocking terror of 9/11. It essentially cemented a course of American military aggression in the region which was to lead to the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and to the threat of invasion of Iran. |