ISLAMABAD — The Taleban’s bid to cling to power in Afghanistan suffered a double setback yesterday as opposition forces gained ground in the north and former ally Saudi Arabia publicly washed its hands of the militia.

The Foreign Ministry summoned the Taleban’s charge d’affaires to officially inform him of its decision and asked him to leave within 48 hours, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

Emboldened by the massive buildup of US forces around the country, troops of the Northern Alliance opposition captured several villages in fierce overnight battles and claimed that at least one Taleban commander had defected.

The opposition offensives came as Saudi Arabia announced it was cutting diplomatic ties with the Taleban in response to intense US pressure to isolate the regime which has sheltered Osama bin Laden for the last five years.

Bin Laden is wanted by the United States in connection with a string of terrorist atrocities culminating in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Taleban’s supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar again said Bin Laden was incapable of planning the sort of sophisticated suicide hijackings, which levelled the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon two weeks ago.

In a message to the American people, he added that the attacks were meant to avenge the United States’ "cruel policies."

"The American people must know that the sad events that took place recently were the result of the their government’s wrong policies," he said in the message, delivered through the Afghan Islamic Press in Pakistan.

"Your government is perpetrating all sorts of atrocities in Muslim countries. Instead of supporting your government’s policies you should urge your government to reconsider their wrong and cruel policies," he said.

"The recent sad event in America was the result of these cruel policies and was meant to avenge this cruelty," he said, without claiming to know who was responsible.

President George W. Bush also called on Afghan citizens disenchanted with Taleban rule to help the United States in its bid to punish Bin Laden for the September 11 attacks.

Bush, answering questions after a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, said the United States was not interested in engaging in "nation-building," suggesting he was not looking to topple the Taleban regime outright in punishing it for harbouring Bin Laden.

But he clearly was trying to stoke anti-Taleban fervor in Afghanistan. "Now, the mission is to root out terrorists, to find them and bring them to justice," Bush told reporters.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair bluntly warned the Taleban to hand over Bin Laden or face war.

"If they stand in the way of bringing Bin Laden to account, they are every bit as much our enemy as Bin Laden himself," he said.

The opposition said clashes flared in three provinces across the Taleban-held north of the country, near the borders with Uzbekistan, where US forces are already believed to be based, and Tajikistan, which is guarded by thousands of Russian soldiers.

Spokesman Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem said from near the frontline that a pro-Taliban commander, Abdul Samad, defected along with an unknown number of armed men on Monday, somewhere to the west of the strategic Dara-e-Souf valley in Samangan province.

Taleban officials, who on Monday claimed to have mobilised 300,000 men in preparation for an all-out war, confirmed the opposition gains, but said they were exaggerated.

Meanwhile Pakistan warned the United States yesterday not to assist opposition forces in Afghanistan.

Speaking at a news conference here, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar cautioned the United States against providing military assistance to the Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of anti-Taleban forces.

"We fear that any such decision on the part of any foreign power to give assistance to one side or another in Afghanistan is a recipe for great suffering for the people of Afghanistan," he said.

Within hours of the warning from Pakistan, Bush signalled the United States might indeed turn to Taleban foes in the effort to dismantle facilities inside Afghanistan that Washington says are used by Bin Laden to train terrorists.

"The mission is to root out terrorists, to find them and bring them to justice," Bush told reporters at the White House.

"One way to do that is to ask for the cooperation of citizens within Afghanistan who may be tired of having the Taleban in place, or tired of having Osama bin Laden, people from foreign soils, in their own land," he said.

The United States has not openly said it would help arm anti-Taleban forces and top officials in Washington insist that ousting the Taleban regime is not presently the prime objective of the fight against terrorism.

Afghan opposition officials however have spoken of intensified contacts with Washington and, joined by several other governments in the region, have made clear they would welcome US backing wholeheartedly.

Bush said he was "most pleased" by the Saudi decision, which left Pakistan as the only country in the world with formal ties to the Taleban.

Pakistan however said it had no intention of following the Saudi move, arguing that continued diplomatic ties were needed in order to ensure that the world had at least one channel of communication with the isolated Taleban regime.

"I think we should maintain contact," Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said.

"At least there should be one country who ought to be able to have an access into them and engage them ... Therefore I don’t really see much requirement for breaking diplomatic relations with the Taleban."

In Islamabad, UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker painted a bleaker picture of the situation in Kabul, saying "up to 50 per cent" of the Afghan capital’s population had reportedly fled to rural areas.

Up to 20,000 Afghans, most of whom have fled from the Taleban stronghold of Kandahar, were waiting near the Chaman border point in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan province, but its scheduled opening yesterday was held up by last-minute security concerns.

Aid organisations fear the total exodus from Afghanistan if there are US strikes could top one million people.

In Kabul, the local currency, the Afghani, which plunged as low as 79,000 to the dollar last week as an attack appeared imminent, recovered to around 58,000.

In one hopeful development, the UN World Food Programme announced that it would resuming shipments of food into Afghanistan, which were suspended on September 12.

The WFP estimates that some 1.6 million Afghans in the northern provinces will run out of food if they do not receive additional supplies.

Meanwhile the Group of Seven financial powers announced yesterday a campaign to choke off financing to terrorists worldwide.

In a statement issued in Washington the group pledged to "pursue a comprehensive strategy to disrupt terrorist funding around the world."

The statement was released as government officials in France and Germany said banks had closed accounts and frozen assets linked to Bin Laden and other people and groups on a list of suspected terrorists issued by the United States on Monday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking in Berlin after a meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, also offered fresh and forceful support for the US-led drive against terrorism.

Terrorist, Putin said, must be dealt with "systematically" and "forced into complete political and ideological isolation.

"All the leading nations in the world" were in agreement on this point, he said.