WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - President Bush rejected a new offer from the Taliban to hand Osama bin Laden to a neutral country as U.S. planes slammed Afghanistan on Sunday and an anthrax scare continued, with more people in Florida and New York reported exposed to the bio-terrorism agent. In one of several signs Taliban forces were feeling the pressure, a senior official from the militant Islamic movement offered to give up bin Laden to a neutral country if the United States provided sufficient evidence linking the Saudi-born militant to the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks on New York and Washington.
``It can be negotiated provided the U.S. gives us evidence and the Taliban are assured that the country is neutral and will not be influenced by the United States,'' Maulvi Abdul Kabir, No. 2 to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, told a news conference in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Bush wasted little time in spurning the offer. ``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.''
On the eighth night of the U.S.-led bombing campaign, at least four planes flew over the Afghan capital, Kabul, and dropped bombs close to the ruling Taliban's front line, facing the opposition Northern Alliance, a witness said. (Read photo caption below)
Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said his forces were delaying an advance against Kabul until a political agreement could be reached on how to rule Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.
With the United States on high alert for further attacks, five more employees of a Florida supermarket tabloid publisher tested positive for anthrax exposure. One worker has died of the disease. In addition, three more people tested positive for exposure to anthrax bacteria in New York, where a letter containing the bacteria was sent to NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw.
The new cases in Boca Raton brought to eight the number of workers at American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Globe and other sex-and-scandal supermarket tabloids, to have been exposed to the deadly disease.
In New York, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said a total of five people were now known to have been exposed to anthrax -- two employees at NBC, plus a police detective and two health workers who came into contact with the letter to Brokaw. Giuliani said the policeman and the lab technicians were found to have spores in their nose or skin, ``but this does not mean they have anthrax.''
The two employees at NBC showed symptoms of skin anthrax exposure after coming into contact with the envelope containing a granular substance. The cases, along with suspicious envelopes sent to other companies, including The New York Times and a Microsoft subsidiary in Reno, Nevada, have raised fears of a biological attack linked to the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
Officials in Reno said four of the six people exposed to anthrax in a letter sent from Malaysia had tested negative and tests had not been completed on the other two.
PHOTO CAPTION:
The U.S. Navy's nuclear powered aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is seen slowly transiting the Suez Canal October 13, 2001. The Roosevelt, currently on a scheduled deployment, is slated to replace the USS Enterprise currently supporting strikes into Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. (U.S. Navy via Reuters)