Afghan rulers offer to try bin Laden

Amid signs that U.S. and British forces stood poised to do battle, Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban moved as many as 10,000 of its fighters toward its northeast frontier with Uzbekistan to counter a large U.S. deployment there. At the same time, the Taliban made an eleventh-hour appeal to halt U.S. attacks, offering Sunday to detain terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden and try him under Islamic law if the United States made a formal request. “We have deployed our forces there at all important places. This is the question of our honor, and we will never bow before the Americans and will fight to the last,” said a Taliban defense ministry source, quoted Sunday by the independent Afghan Islamic Press, which has connections to the Taliban regime. Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Afghan opposition forces as saying Taliban troops were moving long-range artillery and multiple rocket launchers towards the border near the Uzbek town of Termez. The Russian report spoke of 8,000 to 10,000 troops on the move. While the Taliban lack much conventional firepower, they do have some Scud missiles in their arsenal that could threaten Uzbek cities and U.S. forces now being deployed in the former Soviet republic. The foreign minister of Afghanistan’s opposition Northern Alliance, Abdullah Abdullah, warned Kabul residents on Sunday to keep away from military bases and said the alliance had been told to close its air space.