ISLAMABAD - Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, and his protector the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar have said they would stand defiant and choose death over compromise, media said.

"America can never arrest Osama bin Laden alive," spokesman Mullah Abdullah told the Pakistan-based AIP of the man who is suspect number one in the September 11 suicide airliner attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center and sliced into the Pentagon.

"Osama has already decided that death will be preferable to being arrested by America," Abdullah said.

He dismissed rumours that bin Laden had been caught in Afghanistan, where the Taliban have been routed from one province after another in a matter of days. "I called my headquarters in Kandahar at 9 a.m. (0430 GMT) this morning and there was no mention of bin Laden."

Confusion surrounded the control of Kandahar, with the Taliban saying it held the city, the opposition Northern Alliance saying the town was in chaos and a tribal leader in the area saying the Taliban have thrown up a defensive circle round their last major bastion in Afghanistan.

Local ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders were also advancing on the city, their representatives said, apparently eager to seize power from the Taliban before the mainly minority Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance reach there.

Mullah Omar's message, relayed by a spokesman in an interview with the BBC Pashtun service, was defiant.

He said his forces would regroup and fight on, and would prefer death to participation in any broad-based government imposed on the country.

"The Taliban might have committed some mistakes but it is a big development for them to regroup and reorganise," Omar was quoted as saying.

"Four to five provinces are still in our control," he said, speaking two days after the capital, Kabul, fell into the hands of the Northern Alliance while his fundamentalist turbaned fighters retreated under cover of darkness.

"It makes no difference if we control one, two or 20 provinces. Once we did not even have a single province, but later we captured all the provinces," he said of his militia's race to power in the mid-1990s when they too swept into Kabul in a day without a shot fired.

"We have lost the captured provinces but it makes no difference."

Asked whether the Taliban would participate in a future broad-based government, Omar was quoted as saying: "We would prefer death to the government of fascists."

The Taliban's reclusive leader, who lost an eye doing battle with the Soviet invaders in the 1980s, was in his bastion in the southern city of Kandahar and in command of his Taliban forces, spokesman Abdullah told the Pakistan-based AIP said.

"Amirul Momineen (Leader of the Faithful) is at a safe location in Kandahar, he is not hurt," Abdullah said.

"The command is still in the hands of Mullah Omar. The Taliban are completely obeying him," the spokesman said.

However, the city has come under heavy bombardment from U.S. warplanes over the past 24 hours, said border officials in Pakistan.

The bombardment on Thursday was one of the heaviest since the United States launched its attacks 40 days ago to punish the Taliban and hunt down bin Laden, officials said. Nampa-Reuters