Taliban Says Bin Laden Is in Its Control

The Taliban’s ambassador to Pakistan said Sunday that Osama bin Laden is under government control in Afghanistan and is being moved around for his own safety, the first explicit acknowledgment that the government has maintained a direct link with the elusive Saudi militant.

The Taliban has no plans to turn Bin Laden over to U.S. authorities, said Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef, but he asserted that the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks will comply with a request from an Afghan religious council that he leave the country voluntarily.

“When the suitable time will be and where he would want to go, that is something he will have to decide,” Zaeef said.

In the meantime, he said, Bin Laden is being moved among undisclosed locations under heavy guard. “He’s in a place which cannot be located by anyone,” the ambassador said.

U.S. officials said Sunday that they have always believed that the Taliban knows Bin Laden’s whereabouts, despite its earlier claim that he was “missing.”

“If they’ve got him, it makes their guilt and collusion even more clear,” said a senior Bush administration official who asked to remain anonymous. “Every day they don’t turn him over, they become more associated with him and his actions.”

The official said the Taliban “knows clearly” what will happen if Bin Laden is not surrendered.

The Taliban appeared unperturbed and unrepentant. In an unusual radio address to his nation Sunday, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar said Afghans need not fear U.S. military strikes because “Americans don’t have the courage to come here.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld expressed doubts about whether any Taliban officials could be believed. Members of the Taliban are “world-class harborers and facilitators and assisters of terrorist networks,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Well, of course, it was just a few days ago that they said they didn’t know where he was, so I have no reason to believe anything a Taliban representative would say,” he said.

The latest developments led Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to predict that prospects for a peaceful resolution are “very dim.” Last-ditch diplomatic efforts by Islamabad had failed “in moderating [the Taliban’s] views on the surrender of Osama bin Laden,” Musharraf said Sunday on CNN.

In a meeting with a small group of reporters Sunday, Zaeef said the Taliban has been constantly guarding and protecting Bin Laden for more than two years, since the United Nations called for his hand-over after the U.S. indicted him in the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa.

“His activities are being controlled,” Zaeef said. “. . . To say that he is under control means that he is under watch at an undisclosed location. It doesn’t mean all the Taliban know exactly where he is--there are very special people who know his location.”

Reports that Bin Laden had gone missing were “misconstrued,” Zaeef said. All his movements and plans are done “through the knowledge of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” he said.

“He is in places where it is hard to reach, and it takes time to go there, so the communication [with him] is hard to make,” Zaeef said. The ambassador could not say whether the movements were organized by Bin Laden himself or by the Taliban guardians.

The Taliban regime and Bin Laden’s organization are so intertwined that, for most experts here, it is hard to say whether the regime dictates to Bin Laden or Bin Laden dictates to the regime.

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said Sunday that it is the latter. “His force really runs the place like a vassal,” Bhutto told the Reuters news agency, citing sources within the Taliban. Bin Laden’s movement “does control Afghanistan and does control the decisions that are taken,” Bhutto said.

Bin Laden played a lead role in providing financing and Arab volunteers to help the Afghan moujahedeen oust Soviet occupiers in the late 1980s. Terrorism experts say he returned to the country in 1996 and built a network of training camps to prepare volunteers for a worldwide war of terror against the U.S.

The Taliban movement has long benefited from Bin Laden’s access to money, fighters and arms, and has treated him as an honored guest, especially because Bin Laden’s anti-Americanism and strict interpretation of Islam mirror the values of the Taliban’s supreme leader.

Zaeef said all Taliban leaders agree with Omar’s decision not to hand Bin Laden over to the West against his will. “If there are some people who have their own personal views, I am not aware,” he said of possible dissent.

But Zaeef did not rule out the possibility that Bin Laden might be handed to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of Islamic nations that is scheduled to meet next week to discuss the war on terrorism and threats to Afghanistan.

“They should submit whatever proposal they have, and our authorities will look at it and make a decision,” Zaeef said.

If provided with evidence of Bin Laden’s guilt, the Taliban also might open talks with the United States or Pakistan about his future, Zaeef said. “We are thinking of negotiating,” he said.

But U.S. officials said Sunday that Afghanistan’s rigid Islamic government appears to be stalling and that any thought of opening discussions is unacceptable.

“The president has said we’re not negotiating,” White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’ve told the Taliban government what they should be doing. They’ve got to turn not only Osama bin Laden over but all of the operatives of the Al Qaeda organization,” Bin Laden’s network.

Card also issued a strong warning about the Taliban’s right to rule Afghanistan. “If they are going to be associated with these terrorist acts, they should not be in power,” he said.

On another topic, Zaeef denied that any U.S. forces had secretly entered Afghanistan, as reported in some U.S. media.

“There have been no foreigners inside the Islamic government of Afghanistan. There are no soldiers,” he said. “We have full control over all the areas.”

Asked why the Taliban government recently seized communications equipment from U.N. agency offices inside Afghanistan, the ambassador expressed anger at the United Nations for interfering in Afghanistan’s internal affairs by hosting a conference in Rome for the deposed king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who was exiled in 1973.

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Daniszewski reported from Islamabad and Wright from Washington. Jon Peterson in Washington contributed to this report.