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THU SEP 13 2001 08:09 A.M.
G.M.T.
Taliban say evidence linking bin Laden to attack not credible KABUL, Sept 13 (AFP) - Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel Thursday dismissed reports that Western intelligence had linked Osama bin Laden to the terrorist attacks on the United States as lacking any credibility. Mutawakel reiterated that the Taliban would consider extraditing bin Laden if it received "solid and convincing" evidence of his involvement in terrorism, but said the United States had so far failed to deliver this. US Senator Orrin Hatch has said that FBI officials intercepted telephone calls which indicated bin Laden had been involved in plotting the attacks on New York and Washington. A German government spokesman said Wednesday that German, British, French and Israeli secret services had also linked the Saudi dissident to the world's worst terrorist atrocity. But Mutawakel said such claims amounted to an attempt by US intelligence agencies to justify their failure to prevent the attacks by hijacked passenger planes. "The intelligence services have to say something because they are responsible to the people of the US and the Congress," Mutawakel told AFP. "So in order to mask their failure they will accuse anyone. "If they were able to detect the telephone conversation, why were they not able to detect the big attacks?" Copyright (c) 2001, AFP |
