WASHINGTON/ KABUL, Oct 19: The United States disclosed on Friday it had sent a small number of elite commando troops into southern Afghanistan to make contact with factions opposed to the Taliban, which vowed to shield Osama bin Laden and said its defence remained strong.

On the 13th day of non-stop air strikes on Taliban troops and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, the insertion of the first ground troops marked a new phase in the offensive.

“It is at the very, very, very earliest stage,” one defence official said, but declined to say when the troops entered Afghanistan.

The troops were in the south of the country, near the Pakistan border, to contact tribal factions opposed to the Taliban and boost CIA efforts to encourage Pashtun leaders to formally break away from the Taliban.

In the north, Ustad Attah, one of three commanders trying to recapture the strategic northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, said eight US personnel, apparently on an intelligence or reconnaissance mission, had been with fellow opposition commander General Abdul Rashid Dostum for several days.

“First we want to surround Mazar-i-Sharif, so that people there will remain calm and so that the Taliban have no way of escaping,” he said.

The Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, repeated on Friday that his government would not surrender Osama to the United States, as President George W. Bush has demanded.

“The issue of Osama has not changed. It is a matter of our faith, we might as well change our faith,” he said, dismissing US reports that the Taliban defence had been degraded.

MESSAGE: The United States deployed four slow-moving EC-130E “Commando Solo” psychological operations aircraft, broadcasting in local Afghan dialects the message that Afghans could expect to see US troops on the ground.