The US war in Afghanistan will be long and American forces will face defeat once they move the conflict from the air to the ground, the Taliban's top spokesman said today.
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An Afghan baker counts traditional bread at a market in northern Afghanistan
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"We are preparing for a long war," Education Minister and top spokesman Mr Amir Khan Muttaqi told a news conference.
"This power that the world calls a mighty force will face fiasco," he said, speaking on the 29th day of US attacks that have pounded Taliban front line positions facing the opposition Northern Alliance and just hours after the US struck a Kabul hotel used by Taliban fighters.
"Once again we advise the people of America and its government that they still have time to give up their insane action," he said.
"They need to consult the Russians and the British about their defeats here," Mr Muttaqi said, referring to the Afghan massacre of British colonial troops in the 19th century and the humiliation of the Soviet army in their 1979-98 occupation.
"Such consideration should prompt Washington to revise its campaign," he said of the war pursued by the United States to punish the Taliban for extending shelter to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.
"They will reach the conclusion that they will have no gains here, therefore it should revise its war-mongering and terrorist policy... They can never subdue Afghans by force," Mr Muttaqi said.
On a visit to neighbouring Pakistan and to India, US Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said the Taliban no longer existed as a functioning government and that the US bombing was improving daily.
But Mr Muttaqi dismissed those statements in the latest volley in the war of words between the world's only superpower and one of its most impoverished states, saying the campaign had had no impact on the Taliban.
"They have not achieved anything - politically or militarily," he said.
The minister, bearded and turbaned in accordance with the Taliban's interpretation of Islamic rule, said the United States still had time to revise its policy.
"Otherwise the people of Afghanistan and America will burn in the flames of this war," he said, and threw down a challenge to US-led forces to start a ground war in which he said they would face defeat.
"If they have the strength and if their soldiers are not men used to a soft life, why are they not fighting face-to-face?" he said.
Asked if the Taliban was open to negotiations in the war and would ask for a halt to bombing during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Mr Muttaqi was defiant.
"We have no expectation of any sympathy or humanitarian sense from America. Because a tyrant will not heed religious sanctity or appeals to halt bloodshed we have no expectation of any justice from America," he said.
"Why are they killing people, destroying mosques and schools by their technology?" he said.
Only one Taliban fighter had been killed at the front line since the start of the campaign despite several days of carpet-bombing by B-52 bombers, he said.
Officials say the civilian death toll is more than 1,500, a number the United States says is greatly exaggerated.