WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (AFP) - The Taliban's spiritual leader spoke with a US official in 1998, two days after US bombings in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for attacks on US embassies in Africa, documents released Friday showed.
The one-eyed fugitive Mullah Omar was arguably the most powerful man in Afghanistan during the Taliban's 1996-2001 rule, which came to an end after a US-led invasion following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
It was the first and last time Omar, now wanted by the United States, had spoken directly with a US government official, according to the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute and library located at the George Washington University.
The archive, which collects and publishes declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act, provided a draft copy of a summary in an upcoming briefing book on the ineffective 1997-2001 US-Taliban dialogue on expelling bin Laden and his followers in Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan.
Two days after the August 20, 1998 US bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the terrorist attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Omar spoke with Michael Malinowski, then US director for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, it said, quoting a declassified State Department cable.
Omar suggested that president Bill Blinton resign "to restore US popularity in the Islamic world" and asserted that the US bombing would spread bin laden's anti-American message "by uniting the fundamentalist Islamic world and will cause further terrorist attacks."
He requested proof that bin laden had been involved in the African bombings, claming he had seen no evidence implicating bin laden in such bombings since he had been afforded sanctuary in Afghanistan.
Omar's rhetoric mirrored bin Laden's as he criticized the United States for maintaining a military presence in Saudi Arabia.
Another document claimed that the United States had "reliable intelligence that the bin Laden network had been actively seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction -- including chemical weapons -- for use against US interests."
It also noted that bin Laden's network had tried in the past to blow up US airliners in the Pacific.
More than two and a half years after Omar's fundamentalist regime was toppled for harboring bin Laden, both men are still on the loose despite massive international efforts to capture them and multi-million dollar prices on their heads.