KABUL - Vowing to stay in Afghanistan until the job is done, the United States sent in more marines to join the hunt for Osama bin Laden while the world struggled to bring peace and hope to the war-ravaged land.

"We could be there for quite a while, which is fine, because we've got an objective in mind, and we'll stay there until we get our objective," U.S. President George W. Bush told reporters in Washington.

The Pentagon said it was sending the marines to the central Asian region, ready for orders to track down the Saudi-born millionaire it says masterminded the September 11 suicide attacks that killed thousands of people in the United States.

The New York Times online edition said on Wednesday the death toll in the biggest of the three attacks -- on the World Trade Center in New York -- had been revised downwards to below 3,900, as officials discovered duplications and errors.

It said the combined toll could be up to about 4,100.

In Afghanistan, U.S.-led forces targeted bin Laden's long-time protectors, the strictly Muslim Taliban, at strongholds north and south as Germany prepared to host rival Afghan factions on Monday for talks on their political future.

In Saudi Arabia, the daily newspaper al-Watan said bin Laden had ordered his aides to kill him if he risked falling into the hands of U.S. troops.

Quoting unidentified U.S. and European diplomats, the paper said the U.S. administration was convinced it would not capture bin Laden alive after Taliban defectors revealed his death wish to CIA agents in Afghanistan.

"Bin Laden has given precise instructions to his closest aides, who will remain by his side until the end, to shoot him if he becomes surrounded by U.S. troops and cannot escape," the newspaper reported.

Bush has said he wants bin Laden, an avowed enemy of the United States, dead or alive.

On Wednesday, the Taliban again denied knowing where bin Laden was. Spokesman Tayab Agha told a news conference: "There is no relation right now, there is no communication."

The general in charge of the U.S. campaign paid a flying visit to Afghanistan on Tuesday, his first of the war.

U.S. General Tommy Franks did not rule out putting ground troops into the rugged country, where the Taliban are holding out in strongholds in the south and in the north and where U.S. special forces are already operating.

U.S. planes, in action for a 46th day, kept up attacks on the besieged Taliban enclave of Kunduz on Wednesday, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported, as thousands of defenders tried to negotiate a surrender.

The U.S. strikes on Taliban positions and civilian areas in Kunduz caused considerable loss of life, the Pakistan-based AIP said, but this could not be verified independently.

More than 10,000 Afghan Taliban troops and Pakistani, Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to bin Laden are encircled in Kunduz, the fundamentalists' last stronghold in the north.

Taliban defectors and anti-Taliban Northern Alliance troops surrounding Kunduz say Afghan Taliban fighters want to surrender, but their comrades from bin Laden's al Qaeda network -- aware they have nowhere to run -- plan to fight to the death and have prevented their surrender, witnesses said.

The Northern Alliance says it has suspended its ground offensive on the city while surrender talks go on, but U.S. planes have staged daily bombing raids.

The United States also has bombed Kandahar, spiritual home of the embattled Taliban and still firmly under their control, according to Afghans at the Pakistani border. AIP said overnight bombs killed two people in the city.

In the United States, fears of biowarfare resurfaced as a new case of inhalation anthrax was reported in Connecticut and fresh traces of the deadly bacteria were detected in the offices of two more senators in Washington.

Officials said a woman in her 90s was being treated for suspected inhalation anthrax -- if confirmed, the first U.S. anthrax case since a New York hospital worker was diagnosed on October 30 and died a day later.

Officials have been unable to identify who sent the letters, but are leaning toward a domestic rather than foreign culprit.

At a gathering in Washington, the United States, the European Union, Japan and Saudi Arabia launched a hefty financial campaign to rebuild Afghanistan, starting with "quick-hitting" projects to inspire hope among ordinary Afghans.

The United Nations estimates that some five million Afghan refugees are at risk this winter. Many lack shelter and food.

World leaders are focusing on the political and economic fronts as they try to build a stable future for Afghanistan, a country embroiled in conflict since a Soviet invasion in 1979.

Announcing an all-Afghan conference in Berlin next week, the United Nations proposed a small interim administration for the capital Kabul to be set up before a larger, more representative group was convened because of fast-moving events on the ground. Nampa-Reuters