Taliban leaders continued to defy U.S. demands that they hand over suspected Sept. 11 terrorist Osama bin Laden Monday, leading Pakistan's president to predict the coming end of Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
On Sunday, the Taliban had admitted that they were giving bin Laden a safe harbor.
As the United States sent another aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, to the Middle East, the Los Angeles Times reported that Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf told the BBC he believes the Taliban will not last long in its reign over Afghanistan because the United States will soon take military action.
'It appears that the United States will take action in Afghanistan. We have conveyed this to the Taliban,' Musharraf said.
In Rome, the Northern Alliance, the main group opposing the Taliban in Afghanistan, agreed to join forces with Afghanistan's exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah, providing a potential alternative government to the Taliban that would be friendly to Western nations.
Zahir Shah was thrown out of power in 1973, but has said he is not interested in restoring the monarchy. The U.S.-sponsored agreement between him and the Northern Alliance would establish a provisional government for two years, after which democratic elections would follow.
