American and British special forces are on the ground in Afghanistan. The troops are said to be engaged in "scouting" operations that are a normal prelude to military intervention, according to US administration sources. However the sources yesterday denied reports suggesting the units were actively seeking Osama bin Laden.
Speculation had been fanned by newspaper reports and White House comments by President George Bush ahead of a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah. Mr Bush refused to comment on operational matters beyond saying that "it is very hard to fight a ... guerrilla war with conventional forces" but "make no mistake about it - we're in hot pursuit".
His comments came as any hope of the Taliban handing over bin Laden appeared to disappear. A team of Pakistan-based Muslim clerics visited the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in Kabul yesterday in a last ditch attempt to persuade him to hand over bin Laden. But after an hour-long meeting the clerics emerged to say they had failed in their mission.
Accompanied by the chief of the Pakistan intelligence service, the delegation included Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai, one of the most respected mullahs here who runs a seminary in Karachi.
One official in Pakistan said the group was going to try and persuade Mullah Omar that a refusal to hand over Bin Laden was placing the security of Afghanistan in jeopardy. But the group left Kabul with no success.
In Quetta, a public meeting of some 300 clerics again reinforced earlier statements that they would call for a jihad against the US and any country that assists it if Afghanistan is attacked.
However the US continued to prepare for military action.
With a major humanitarian crisis looming here the UN has appealed for $584 million in fresh emergency aid to cope with the 7.5 million Afghans likely to suffer from displacement and hunger in the coming months.
Asked what the President meant by the comments, his spokesman, Mr Ari Fleischer, said he would "leave that to others to guess at" and refused to comment on troop movements.
Earlier USA Today had reported from Peshawar the presences of US forces on the ground inside Afghanistan and claimed they were "looking for Osama bin Laden" but having difficulty finding him.
The paper reported that the arrival of special forces two weeks ago and subsequent movement into Afghanistan have been reported by English and Urdu language newspapers in Pakistan. At the weekend two British papers claimed British special forces had already been involved in a limited skirmish with the Taliban.
The Pakistan Foreign Minister, Mr Riaz Mohammad Khan, said there are no US forces "on the ground" but he would not comment on whether troops had landed and then moved on into Afghanistan.
Meanwhile CBS claimed that it has been told by the Foreign Minister of the Northern Alliance that bin Laden has been spotted in the central Afghan province of Uruzgan, and his closest advisers were seen in the city of Jallalabad, near the Pakistani border.
A defector from bin Laden's organisation, al Qaeda, has told ABC News that one of the men accused of hijacking the planes on September 11th trained with him at one of the group's camps in Afghanistan.
The defector said he trained for six months at a camp in Afghanistan to become an intelligence agent for bin Laden.
He identified from photographs of the 19 hijackers a man named by the FBI as Majed Moqed, a possible Saudi national. "Yeah. He was with my class...
I could recognise him from his face," the defector said. "He is from Saudi Arabia, and he's about 20, 25 to 30 years old".
The American regional build-up has been boosted by what agency reports to be a decision by the Saudis to allow US use in operations against Afghanistan planes.
