Rahmatullah was due to meet officials of the US State Department and the National Security Council yesterday in Washington, where he will also speak next week at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council of the United States and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
He would not disclose details of a possible new proposal for a way out of the standoff over bin Laden, the Taliban's fourth, saying he needed a signal from Washington first.
But there are reports in Pakistan that one option might be turning bin Laden over to a special tribunal, perhaps in The Hague, for trial by a panel of Islamic judges.
The Clinton administration had rejected an Afghan trial, international monitoring of bin Laden -- whom Rahmatullah described as a nobody the Americans made into a hero -- or exile in another Muslim country.
Rahmatullah's visit and the wide hearing he is getting have provoked criticism in Congress, particularly from supporters of India, which along with Russia has begun to give military help to the Taliban's opposition. He was given an American visa because he falls below the rank of the highest officials in the Taliban government, who are barred from traveling under an embargo.
Throughout a long interview on a range of subjects, Rahmatullah maintained the fiercely independent attitude of the Taliban, who have demonstrated repeatedly to the UN that they will cooperate with the world only on their own terms.
"They want to change our policies through economic sanctions," he said of the US and other nations that pushed an embargo through the Security Council. "That does not work. For us, our ideology is first, then the economy. To try to change our ideology with economic sanctions is ridiculous."
Rahmatullah said the Taliban were in desperate need of agricultural help to supply farmers who once planted opium and to teach them to grow other crops. The UN narcotics control program has told the Taliban it has no money for seeds, and drug control officials wonder if the new ban on poppy cultivation can be sustained.
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