Pakistan: Afghanistan running out of time

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistan declared yesterday that Afghanistan's Taliban rulers "don't have much time" to stave off U.S.-led military strikes, the clearest signal yet that the Pakistani government is washing its hands of the Taliban's fate.

"Pakistan has conveyed to the Taliban what the situation is, what are the dangers, what the international community is expecting them to do," Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan said. "We have told them they don't have much time."

Coming from a country that was once the closest ally of Afghanistan's harshly Islamic rulers - and which has now pledged itself as a U.S. partner - the warning carried the weight of finality.

Khan spoke to reporters after U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin briefed Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on the status of the investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, which Washington blames on Saudi exile Osama bin Laden.

The Taliban refusal to hand over bin Laden and his al-Qaida lieutenants has brought Afghanistan to the brink of armed confrontation with the United States.

Khan said that despite Chamberlin's briefing, Pakistan still has not been presented with definitive proof that al-Qaida was behind the suicide hijackings Sept. 11.