Mullah Mohammed Omar

In an unusual instance of cross-border cooperation, Pakistani authorities arrested a ranking figure in Afghanistan's Taliban movement after receiving a tip that he had entered Pakistan, officials disclosed Saturday. Few details were provided about the capture of Ustad Yasar, a senior aide to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. He had been released by Afghan officials in 2007 in a much-criticized prisoner exchange to secure the freedom of a kidnapped Italian journalist.

Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar called on Afghanistan's neighbors to help his militants oust President Hamid Karzai and force foreign troops out of the country. In southern Afghanistan a police vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb, leaving four officers dead and six wounded, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said.

A self-described Taliban spokesman has told Afghan agents that the militia's chief, Mullah Mohammed Omar, lives in southwestern Pakistan and is protected by that country's powerful intelligence service. Pakistan denied the allegation by Mohammed Hanif, made on a video given to reporters Wednesday. Omar's whereabouts have been a mystery since he went into hiding after the Taliban government he headed was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S.

A Pakistani newspaper quoted fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar as saying that he had not seen Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden since the hard-line Islamist government was ousted in Afghanistan five years ago. Omar also said the Taliban and Al Qaeda still shared the goal of driving U.S. forces out of Afghanistan, the influential Dawn daily reported. The authenticity of the comments could not be confirmed.

Where's Mullah Omar? It has been more than five years since the Taliban's supreme leader, a onetime village cleric, vanished into the trackless terrain outside his fallen Afghan stronghold, Kandahar. And his likeliest source of sanctuary is thought to be the belt of rugged tribal territory straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the law of no nation prevails.

Fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has rejected the latest offer of peace talks by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a rebel spokesman said Saturday. Instead, Omar, who has a $10-million U.S. bounty on his head, repeated his threat to prosecute Karzai in an Islamic court for the "massacre" of Afghans.

President Hamid Karzai called for more coordination between foreign forces and tribal leaders in counterterrorism operations. The call came as the U.S.-led coalition announced the deaths of two of its soldiers, and a Pakistani TV station played what it said was an audiotape of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar saying his militants control large areas of the south. A self-described Taliban spokesman denied that the tape was authentic.

A veteran Afghan official said Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar might be ready to make peace and that the government should welcome him. Sibghatullah Mojaddidi, the head of a peace commission, said he would negotiate with any Afghans ready to lay down their arms and recognize the new government. Mojaddidi said Omar and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, both wanted as terrorists by the U.S., should be eligible for reconciliation.

Pakistani authorities said Saturday that they were interrogating a former Taliban commander arrested on suspicion of masterminding the late October kidnapping of three U.N. election workers in Afghanistan. Akbar Agha, who reportedly led Taliban forces in 1996 for 11 months, was taken into custody in Karachi last week, officials said.

A recorded voice, purportedly of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, admonished guerrillas who have abandoned a jihad, or holy war, against foreign troops and urged renewed resistance, two years after U.S.-led troops drove him from power. "I sacrificed my rule and all I had ... why can't you? If you can't stand for your honor, it means your faith is weak," the voice said. The tape was handed to a reporter in the southern town of Spin Buldak by unidentified men on a motorbike.