JALALABAD, Oct 14: The Taliban said on Sunday that Osama bin Laden could be handed to a neutral country for trial if the United States provided sufficient evidence.

Maulvi Abdul Kabir, number two in the Taliban, urged the United States, which on Sunday began an eighth night of air raids on Taliban positions, to remember the days when Afghanistan and the United States were allied in a holy war against Soviet occupation — and to hold talks.

Washington lost little time in rejecting the offer, which appeared to edge slightly away from earlier demands that any trial be held in an Islamic country.

Asked if Osama bin Laden could be handed to the United States, Kabir told a news conference:

“It can be negotiated provided the US gives us evidence and the Taliban are assured that the country is neutral and will not be influenced by the United States,” he said in Jalalabad.

“If the Taliban are provided with evidence, then negotiations can start.”

His audience of reporters were the first foreign nationals to be let into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan since last month’s kamikaze attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

However, he declined to specify which country could be acceptable as a site for the trial of Osama bin Laden.

“We can’t identify the country unless we are given the evidence against Osama,” he said.

White House spokeswoman Anne Womack reiterated that talks were out of the question. “The president has made it clear there will be no negotiations,” she said in Washington.

Kabir turned to history to appeal to the United States to begin talks, remembering the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of Afghanistan when the United States backed the Afghan Mujahideen in their war of resistance.

“Why is American not reviving the time of Jihad with Afghanistan by starting talks?” he said.

“If there is any difference between the West and the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, we are ready to sit with them and resolve them,” he said.

“We do not intend to endanger the security of others,” he added, in unusually conciliatory remarks.

However, he dismissed US charges that Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network had set up terrorist camps across Afghanistan.

“There are no terrorist camps in Afghanistan,” he said.

“There are Mujahideen centres throughout the country that were established 20 years ago, and if the US calls these centres of terrorism, then there are terrorist camps in the entire country,” he said.

DEATH TOLL RISES: The death toll from the first week of attacks was well over 200, he said, but stressed that only two Taliban fighters had been killed and two wounded in the attacks and the rest of the casualties were civilians.

Earlier, the Taliban officials showed reporters a village in remote hills outside Jalalabad where they said up to 200 civilians had been killed in bombing raids last week.

They said an unspecified number had died in a similar misdirected attack west of the capital before dawn.

The Taliban officials took the international reporters from Pakistan to Khorum village near Jalalabad where they said up to 200 people may have been killed in a bomb strike last week.

“I ask America not to kill us,” pleaded resident Hussain Khan, who said he lost four children in the raid and survived only by racing out of the house when he first heard the plane.

The stench of death enveloped the village. In the rubble of one house, the remains of an arm stuck out from beneath a pile of bricks. A leg had been uncovered nearby.

Villagers were still digging through the rubble for bodies on Sunday. Six fresh graves could be seen nearby.

It was not clear what happened to the other bodies officials say they recovered.

US REACTION: US President George W. Bush rejected the latest offer by the Taliban to turn over Osama bin Laden if the United States supplied sufficient evidence of his guilt.

“When I said no negotiations, I meant no negotiations,” Bush told reporters as he returned to the White House from his Camp David retreat. “We know he’s guilty, turn him over.” –Reuters