| The Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Mulla Abdul Salam Zaeef, said on Sunday that Osama bin Laden was still inside Afghanistan and under the protection of the Taliban administration. He added that only security people knew where he was. The envoy said a message from the ulema council, asking him to leave the country volantarily, had been delivered to Osama but was not aware of his reply. Speaking at a news conference here, Mulla Zaeef strongly reacted to the US president's statement that there would be no more negotiations with the Taliban regime for resolving the Osama issue. The envoy said his government still wanted a settlement of the issue through bilateral negotiations but, instead, he added,the United States was persistently threatening to attack Afghanistan. The envoy rejected as baseless the report that five Americans had been captured by the Taliban. |