US and British special forces have been scouring southern Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden as the Taliban, still holding their key southern stronghold of Kandahar, said he was no longer in their territory.
US bombers were in action in the skies of Afghanistan, hitting the Taliban in Kandahar and their besieged northern redoubt in Kunduz, as the campaign to track down the Saudi-born millionaire entered its 44th day.
The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, said that bin Laden - who is accused of masterminding the September 11th attacks on the United States - was no longer in Taliban-controlled areas.
"We don't know whether he is in Afghanistan or not," Zaeef said after returning from a visit to Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home which is still firmly in their hands.
"But he is definitely not in our area." Gul Agha, an anti-Taliban commander deploying fighters southeast of Kandahar, said he doubted reports bin Laden was in his area, believing the fugitive could be southwest of Kandahar.
"If he's there, then he's southwest of Kandahar," spokesman Mohammad Yusuf Pashtun quoted Gul Agha as saying. "That area is still strongly in the hands of the Taliban."
In Kunduz, the last enclave held by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, the opposition said it had suspended its ground assault to give the Taliban a chance to surrender. But US bombing continued, pummelling the militia's front lines.
The opposition says 10,000 to 12,000 Taliban troops - including many Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network - were holed up in the city.
"We worry that if there is a battle, civilians will suffer. We do not want to allow bloodshed, so we are talking to the Taliban. The local civilians are hostages," said Ariyonfard Shamsulkhak, press attache at the Northern Alliance embassy in Dushanbe.
"If the Taliban do not lay down their weapons, then the fighting will begin. There is no other way out. And then, unfortunately, another city will be sacked." Afghan Taliban troops in the besieged enclave have been offering to surrender to the United Nations but foreign fighters were refusing to give up.
In Kandahar, US bombers again pounded targets around the city, home of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
There was no sign the Taliban were ready to abandon the powerbase despite reports on Friday of a deal to withdraw that would leave Kandahar in the hands of fellow members of the ethnic Pashtun majority. The military advance of the Northern Alliance, which swept into Kabul last Tuesday just days after starting a major land offensive, has far outstripped political progress on agreeing a future broad-based post-Taliban government for Afghanistan.
But the pace of diplomacy has quickened, with UN envoy Francesc Vendrell holding talks in Kabul and James Dobbins, US representative to the opposition, doing the same in Tashkent.
The result was an apparent climbdown by the Alliance from its demand that talks on the future of Afghanistan be held in Kabul despite objections by its political rivals and the UN.
Pakistan said the meeting could take place this weekend. But the UN said there had still not been a breakthrough on setting a firm time and place.