In Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance Foreign Minister has said that Inter-Afghan talks on the country's future are to begin within days. Dr Abdullah Abdullah, who was speaking after talks in Kabul with UN envoy Fransesc Vendrell, denied suggestions that his forces were blocking a political settlement.
Meanwhile, the Taliban has discounted an earlier report that Osama bin Laden has left Afghanistan. The envoy to Pakistan said that he was still in the country but his whereabouts there are unknown.
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said that the US military had no evidence that bin Laden had left Afghanistan and were still hunting him.
However, the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, told reporters after crossing the border into Pakistan that he had brought an important message for the Pakistani government. He did not disclose details.
The Taliban is continuing to hold on to its southern powerbase of Kandahar and at Konduz in the north. A Taliban spokesman said that they had thousands of troops in Kandahar and in the provinces around it and they would fight to retain control of them to maintain Islamic rule.
In a separate development, a Taliban official has denied American claims that a top al Qaeda official Mohammed Atef, has been killed. The Pentagon said that he had been killed in a bombing raid south of the capital Kabul earlier this week.
Earlier, Afghanistan's former president Burhanuddin Rabbani said that the Northern Alliance would not cling to power and would welcome a broad-based government in his country.
Mr Rabbani made the statement after returning to the Afghan capital, Kabul, for the first time since he was ousted by Taliban troops in 1996.
Many members of the Northern Alliance are said to be deeply unhappy at the prospect of his resuming the presidency in Afghanistan.
The Alliance have also been meeting to discuss their response to the deployment of British troops at a strategic air base to the north of Kabul.
The Alliance is demanding the withdrawal of most of the 100 British soldiers deployed at Bagram airport.
A senior Alliance official said that 15 soldiers could stay to carry out humanitarian tasks. The official said the troops had been deployed without prior co-ordination with the Northern Alliance.
Meanwhile, Taliban troops have vowed to fight on in their southern stronghold of Kandahar. A spokesman for the spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar said there were thousands of Taliban troops in the city and surrounding provinces.
The spokesman dismissed as “lies” earlier reports by the Pakistan-based Afghan news agency that Mullah Omar had decided to withdraw from Kandahar.
