However, despite his efforts, the Taliban's three-year-old guerrilla campaign against some 18,000 American troops and Kabul's ragtag military may be in danger of collapsing, said Newsweek magazine.

Musharraf met Mullah Omar  

According to the magazine, interviews with Taliban fighters, commanders and officials show that the mysterious Emir is alive and touring the countryside on a motorcycle in a bid to resuscitate his ebbing movement.

"Mullah Omar has never been more active," Taliban spokesman Mufti Lutfullah Hakimi told Newsweek in a secret meeting along the Pakistani-Afghan border. "Anyone who thinks he's isolated, hiding in a cave and fearing for his life couldn't be more wrong."

One of the problems for him is that the Taliban seems to be getting less funding from Al Qaeda, largely because bin Laden is believed to feel that Mullah Omar's guerrillas are not not putting up an aggressive and effective fight, the magazine said.

Afghan agents get in touch with Mullah Omar  

"We are not getting as much money as we used to from Al Qaeda," Mullah Hai, a former close aide to Mullah Omar who lives near Quetta, was quoted as saying.

"The Arabs complain that we lack organisation and solid battlefield results," he said.

Meanwhile, according to senior Afghan and US military officials, there's solid evidence to prove that "a number" of senior Taliban commanders are contemplating laying down their arms under an amnesty programme that has yet to be codified.

Mullah Omar in Pakistan:  Karzai 

The plan would allow Taliban fighters and even commanders who've not been involved in egregious human-rights violations to return to a normal life without punishment if they lay down their weapons and agree to abide by the country's new Constitution.

If it works, Newsweek says, the amnesty offer could mark the beginning of the end of the bloody Taliban insurgency.

"The name of the game right now is this amnesty offer," Pakistani author and noted Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid told the magazine.

"The most significant thing that's emerged over the past three years is that there's little or no public support for the Taliban's armed struggle."

CIA let Omar slip through the noose 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the United States would like to persuade moderate former Taliban officials who have already been captured or have turned themselves in to join the political process.

Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, Mullah Omar's last foreign minister, is a favourite of both. He surrendered in February 2002, just months after the Taliban's defeat, and spent months in prison before being released and put under house arrest in Kabul.

The report also quotes Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Lt Gen David Barno, as saying that the Taliban's roughly 2,000 insurgents have all but stopped fighting in recent months.

America's War on Terror