The Taliban’s reclusive leader says his fighters have infiltrated the Afghan police and army and are successfully killing a rising number of US-led coalition forces.

Afghanistan’s president has called on the Taliban to give up their weapons, saying that the group and its leader should join the political process.

The Taliban’s former defence minister died in a Pakistani jail in 2010, a spokesman for the insurgent group said today.

The Taliban has denied a report in the Afghan press that leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has been killed in neighbouring Pakistan, saying he is alive and in Afghanistan.

TALIBAN officials have engaged in periodic, discreet contacts with Afghan and US officials for months but are unwilling to move to formal peace negotiations until the US agrees to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, according to a Pakistani intelligence official and members of a newly formed Afghan peace council.

The Taliban says it is moving fighters into Kandahar, planting bombs and plotting attacks as Nato and Afghan forces prepare for a summer showdown with militants.

MORE Taliban leaders have been captured in Pakistan following the arrest of its deputy leader.

More Taliban leaders have been captured in Pakistan following the arrest of the group’s deputy leader.

A Pakistan military chief confirmed today that the Afghan Taliban’s number two leader has been arrested.

THE Taliban’s top military commander has been arrested in a joint CIA-Pakistani operation in Pakistan in a major victory against the insurgents as US troops push into their heartland in southern Afghanistan, officials said yesterday.

A TOP Arab al-Qaida operative was among six militants killed overnight in a suspected US missile strike in north-west Pakistan, a senior security official said yesterday.

A KEY Taliban commander said that al-Qaida terror network chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are both alive and in good health after more than three years on the run.

AFGHAN security forces have captured Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar’s personal security chief as he travelled in a van to the southern city of Kandahar, provincial officials said yesterday.

TALIBAN leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was wounded in a US air raid that killed four of his bodyguards earlier this month, according to reports in Pakistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai today vowed to do everything he could to prevent terrorist attacks and protect foreigners in his country, two days after a suicide bomber killed four German peacekeepers.

Maybe he is dead, either from US bombing, gunfire from his own men or even, as one newspaper reported, from cancer. Maybe he is holed up deep in a mountain cave or hiding in a fortified Pakistan border village. Or perhaps he is in Chechnya, Somalia or back home in Saudi Arabia.

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban has proposed a duel between US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar to decide once and for all who will stand and who will run.

The first ground attack of the war on terrorism this weekend was a foretaste of the crucial role British and American elite troops will play in smoking out Osama bin Laden, defence sources said today.

The son of Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has reportedly been killed in the air strikes.

The Taliban regime has altered its position on ‘‘prime suspect’’ Osama bin Laden repeatedly since the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11.

British journalist Yvonne Ridley is to be released by the Taliban, it has been reported.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have reportedly denied a claim that they had declared Holy War on the US

Afghans are again being told to be ready for holy war against the United States, according to the Taliban's news agency.

America geared up for war yesterday with Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, warning the country's servicemen that they would be called on to vanquish "powerful and terrible enemies" in the months ahead.

Afghanistan's Taliban leader says Allah has sent rain to the drought-hit country because he's pleased at the smashing of the Buddha statues.