The Taliban's days are numbered, said the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, who has been the Afghan regime's only friend in the international community.His comments came after the US confirmed that President George Bush had ordered financial support for groups opposed to the Taliban. General Musharraf, whose country is alone in retaining diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime, said Pakistan had done its best to avoid a confrontation over Osama bin Laden, the Afghanistan-based suspect for the 11 September terrorist attacks in the US.But he added: "It appears that the United States will take action in Afghanistan We have conveyed this to the Taliban Because of the stand the Taliban have taken ... confrontation will take place."Asked if the Taliban's days were numbered, he replied: "It appears so."The Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, continued to spit defiance at the US, saying in a broadcast that Americans "don't have the courage to come here".The Taliban's defence minister urged the country's soldiers to fight hard against any attacks the US may launch, the Afghan Islamic Press said. "Fight hard against attacks; defend your country," Mullah Obaidullah said during a visit to troops based at Torkham near the Pakistan border. "If your enemy is strong, our God is the strongest".But the regime, wary of calls for the former king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, to convene a grand assembly to decide the country's future, also announced a power-sharing deal in three eastern provinces, which might be tempted to support the ex-monarch.Pashtun tribal leaders whose traditional authority has been undermined by the Islamic movement, as well as former commanders who fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, will be given posts in the provincial governments of Khost, Paktia and Paktika.Mullah Omar, his voice rising, rebuked the former king in his broadcast, saying: "How dare you think you can return to Afghanistan backed by the United States. How are you going to rule the country?"Zahir Shah belongs to the Durrani clan of the Pashtun, from which most of Afghanistan's rulers have come for the past three centuries. If he were to call a grand assembly, or loya jirga, non-Pashtuns might fear being sidelined.But representatives of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, drawn mainly from the Tajik and Uzbek minorities, announced yesterday that they had reached agreement with Zahir Shah in Rome, where the ex-king has lived since 1973.The Rome deal calls for a loya jirga to elect a head of state and transitional government, but details are sketchy, including whether it was dependent on the Taliban being ousted from power..

The fate of Yvonne Ridley, the British journalist captured by the Taliban, is expected to be decided today after the Foreign Office succeeded in making contact with the Afghan regime on Sunday for the first time.The news came as a relief to Joyce and Allan Ridley, Yvonne's parents, who have been waiting for news since learning on Friday that their daughter had been detained while trying to cross the border between Pakistan and Afganistan, disguised as a local woman in purdah. A spokesman confirmed the Foreign Office made direct contact with the Taliban to express their utmost concern about the journalist's well-being and to inquire whether charges are to be brought against her. The Taliban sent a message in response to signal a decision is imminent.A Foreign Office spokesman said: "In the meantime, we cannot confirm Yvonne's exact whereabouts but we have no reason to believe she is being mistreated."Ms Ridley's mother, Joyce, a retired university lecturer from County Durham, said: "The next few days are absolutely crucial for us, we do feel relief that a decision is due soon but there is still uncertainty and dread if she is charged."But the family's relief was undermined by reports in the Middle-Eastern media of Ms Ridley's alleged espionage links. Al Jazira, a Qatar television station, claimed the 43-year-old Sunday Express reporter could be either a British intelligence agent, married to an Israeli spy, or be an Israeli agent herself.Her mother dismissed the claims as "malicious rumours".Mrs Ridley said her daughter, who has been divorced three times, had never been married to an Israeli and had no strong religious leanings.Two previous husbands were been British; one was Iraqi. She has been single for the past two years.Mrs Ridley said it was absurd to suggest Yvonne was anything but an ambitious journalist, a patriotic Briton and an unlucky captive among a hordes of reporters gathering news in Pakistan and Afganistan.Ms Ridley's former husband Daoud Zaaroura, an ex-colonel with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation,also rejected the claims made by Al Jazira."The only important issues for her were humanitarian ones and whoever reported these lies meant to cause her harm," he said. "It's highly irresponsible to report statements like these without any evidence."Ms Ridley's daughter, Daisy, has made her own appeal in the form of a letter to Tony Blair, beseeching the Prime Minister to "bring mummy home" for her birthday tomorrow.She wrote: "My mummy is Yvonne Ridley and I want her home for my birthday on Wednesday You are the prime minister and the most powerful person. I miss my mummy very much and will only be happy when she is back home.".

Bangladesh voted yesterday in an election scarred by unprecedented violence and overshadowed by the impending American conflict with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.More than 150 people have been killed in campaign violence that involved supporters of the two main parties assaulting each other with iron bars at rallies. A bomb blast on Sunday in the southern town of Bagherhat killed eight people at an election rally. Britain and the US have warned their nationals against travelling to the country while polling is in progress. The bitterness between the parties extends to relations between the main party leaders.Sheikh Hasina, head of the Awami League – in power from 1996 until July this year, when a caretaker government took over – is a bitter enemy of Khaleda Zia, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which is allied to four right-wing parties, including the hardline Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami.Mrs Hasina claims her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's first leader after independence from Pakistan in 1971, was murdered by army officers closely linked to Mrs Zia's husband. He ruled as dictator of Bangladesh after a military coup in 1975 overthrew the Awami League government.The fall-out from the US crisis with Afghanistan has been strongly felt in Dhaka, capital of this mostly Muslim country. Posters of Osama Bin Laden sometimes outnumber campaign posters for the BNP and Awami League. The media has followed the Afghan crisis in detail, fuelling Sheikh Hasina's claim that an opposition win would lead to an Islamic theocracy subverting the country's secular constitution.Some commentators believe the BNP may benefit from any Western strikes against the Taliban out of Muslim solidarity.Amid fears that the results will be contested and only trigger more violence, some 500,000 soldiers, paramilitary troops and police patrolled streets and guarded the 30,000 polling booths All the shops in Dhaka closed for the day Many people voted early for fear of being caught in clashes. "People are saying that there will be fighting later, so I decided to come early," one Dhaka voter said..