Afghan government representatives have met with a top-ranking Taliban member in his prison cell in Pakistan, an official said, suggesting a small step toward reopening stalled peace talks with the insurgent group.

Four-thousand Taliban troops are giving themselves up to an opposition commander, claims the Afghan Embassy.

Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers today defiantly rejected US President George Bush’s "second chance" offer to surrender terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden.

Afghan men thronged their closing embassy in the Saudi capital by the defiant hundreds today, angry and adamant that they would return home to fight a feared US attack.