SLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 21 ・Within hours of President Bush's speech to Congress on Thursday night demanding that the militant Muslim clerics who rule Afghanistan hand over Osama bin Laden, their envoy gave today what was described as their final answer: "No, no, no!"

The rebuff was delivered by the clerics' emissary to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, at a news conference here in the Pakistan capital, where he had traveled after consulting in Kandahar with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the supreme leader of the Taliban Islamic movement, which rules most of Afghanistan.

Ending days of shifting declarations by the Taliban, Mullah Zaeef said the Taliban were ready, if necessary, for war with the United States.

"Our decision originates from the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and from Almighty God," he said.

Asked by clamoring reporters if the answer was firm, Mullah Zaeef replied, "This is the final decision."

The envoy and his deputy at the Taliban Embassy in Pakistan, Suhail Shaheen, warned that President Bush, in seeking to crush international terrorism, would lead the United States into the same fate that befell other powers that invaded Afghanistan over the centuries.

"So the only master of the world wants to threaten us," said Mr. Shaheen, speaking in English. "But make no mistake: Afghanistan, as it was in the past ・the Great Britain, he came, the Red Army, he came ・Afghanistan is a swamp. People enter here laughing, are exiting injured."

In a chilling codicil drawn from the tally the Taliban have made of the number of Afghans killed during the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980's, he added: "But we are Afghans. We can defend. We have offered two million for our independence. We are ready to offer two million more."

With the Taliban-ruled parts of Afghanistan effectively sealed, the news conference was a rare opportunity to question Taliban officials on the religious decree issued Thursday in Kabul, the capital, suggesting that Mr. bin Laden should leave Afghanistan and spare the country from attack. An official translation of the clerics' decree urged the Taliban to "encourage Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan in his own free will in any possible time and choose any other place for himself."

But Mullah Zaeef, wearing the long black turban common to top Taliban officials, implied that Mullah Omar, a prayer leader and religious teacher who exercises overarching authority from his seclusion in Kandahar, had overruled the clerics. The Kabul decree, issued by an emergency conclave of a body known as the Supreme Council of the Islamic Clergy, was "only a recommendation," the envoy said, and Mr. bin Laden would not be asked to leave Afghanistan. "There is no compulsion," he said.

Almost lost in the confusion over what the Taliban intends to do has been the question of where Mr. bin Laden is, and whether the Taliban could actually hand him over if they wanted to.

Mullah Zaeef smiled when he was asked for Mr. bin Laden's whereabouts. "We don't have exact information about this issue," he said.

But moments later he implied that the Taliban could at least get a message to him. Speaking of the decree issued by the clerics, he said, "Of course, that would have been delivered to him."

In one report earlier this week, newspapers in Pakistan said Mr. bin Laden had been seen "riding off on a horse" after President Bush cited him as the prime suspect in the terrorist attacks in the United States.

Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, is said to have told American investigators that it knows of at least 10 hideouts where Mr. bin Laden has been spotted, both around Kandahar and near two other cities in eastern Afghanistan, Khost and Jalalabad.

But what seems more likely, considering Mr. bin Laden's reputation as a canny man who rarely sleeps in the same place two nights in a row and who required reporters visiting him in recent years to travel for hours, at night, in cars with covered windows, is that nobody but his cohort and the Taliban know where he is. It is also far from sure that the Taliban could hand him over peacefully, because Mr. bin Laden, a Saudi, is said by Western intelligence agencies to have several thousand armed Arab followers in Afghanistan.

Mullah Zaeef is an influential figure in the Taliban because Pakistan is one of only three countries that recognizes the Taliban government. The others are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. So his vision of what lies ahead may be one of the best indicators of Taliban thinking.

The only hint of flexibility, one the United States has already rejected as a play for time, came in his demand that Washington lay before the Taliban evidence of Mr. bin Laden's involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. "If the Americans provide evidence, we will cooperate with them, but they do not provide evidence," he said.

As formulated earlier by Mullah Omar, the demand for evidence was attached to a suggestion that Mr. bin Laden be handed over for trial before an Islamic court in another Muslim country.

Mr. Shaheen, the deputy ambassador, took up the demand for the United States to prove its case against Mr. bin Laden, a theme that has been widely echoed across the Muslim world.

"In America, if I think you are a terrorist, is it properly justified that you should be punished without evidence?" he asked. "This is an international principle. If you use the principle, why do you not apply it to Afghanistan?"

Mullah Zaeef suggested that Mr. bin Laden has been made a scapegoat by Washington. "The American F.B.I. and other agencies want to escape the failure of 5,000 people being killed, and for that reason they want to put the blame on Osama bin Laden," he said.