Taliban Says Bin Laden Stays Put

According to Reuters news service:

Taliban spokesman Mohammad Tayeb said Sunday that "even if there is evidence that shows [Osama bin Laden's] involvement [in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa], then any trial he could face would be here in Afghanistan."

Previously, Taliban officials had based their refusal to give up bin Laden on their assertion they had not been shown adequate evidence he was behind attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed more than 200 people.

Tayeb said this new, tougher Afghan stance had been conveyed to William Milam, who is Washington's ambassador to Pakistan.

It came at the very time Milam was assuring the Afghan ambassador, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, that the Clinton-Gore administration has no intention of making another attack on the terrorist's encampments in Afghanistan.

On the heels of the embassy bombings, the United States had launched missiles against some of bin Laden's hideouts in eastern Afghanistan.

And there have been repeated recent rumors of U.S. Special Forces either in Afghanistan or preparing to go there to dig out bin Laden and bring him to trial.

Bin Laden is on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Most Wanted" list of fugitives. The United States has offered a $5 million bounty for his capture. And the United Nations Security Council has imposed aviation and financial sanctions against Afghanistan for refusing to expel bin Laden to face trial.

In an effort to make negotiations go more easily, the Clinton-Gore administration has been soft-pedaling suggestions that bin Laden is behind the Oct. 12 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen that killed 17 American sailors.