The spiritual leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar, yesterday called an urgent meeting of senior Islamic clerics to discuss the defence of his increasingly isolated nation.
The people of the landlocked and war-ravaged land which has given refuge to Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the US terror attacks, are braced for war, with residents fleeing Kabul or stocking up on food, sending prices soaring and the value of the Afghani currency sliding.
"As regards the possible attack by America on the sacred soil of Afghanistan, veteran honourable ulemas (clerics) should come to Kabul for a Sharia decision," Mullah Omar said in a statement on the Taliban's Voice of Shariat radio. "The valorous nation can defend Islam and their country in the light of their verdict."
The Information Minister, Mr Qudratullah Jamal, said the meeting would take place by Wednesday and Mullah Omar, who rarely ventures outside the city of Kandahar, would not attend. Up to 1,000 delegates could be there.
On Saturday, Mullah Omar issued a call for jihad (holy war) against the US and neighbouring states such as traditional supporter Pakistan if they attacked or assisted an attack on Afghanistan.
Mullah Omar's call came as almost all remaining Westerners in the capital evacuated ahead of expected US attacks aimed at exacting retribution on Saudi-born Islamic zealot bin Laden and his Taliban protectors.
With Iran announcing it was sealing its eastern border with Afghanistan, opposition fighters controlling a narrow northern corridor and Pakistan pledging to support US anti-terrorism efforts, Kabul residents were feeling increasingly vulnerable.
"It is a very fearful situation and I have definitely to admit it is something I never felt before," Mr Robert Monin, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation, said as they joined the exodus from Afghanistan.
"I think that everybody is fearing what will happen and I heard that many people have taken their families out of the cities," said Mr Monin. "They fear of course that the impact could be disastrous. The mood among our local staff is a mood which I have never seen."
Even as the ICRC - the most reluctant of aid organisations to leave danger zones - pulled out of Afghanistan, momentum towards a confrontation between the US and the Taliban appeared to be growing.
President Bush said on Saturday that bin Laden, who has been sheltered by the Taliban despite UN demands that he be turned over, was the prime suspect for last Tuesday's suicide attacks.
With Mr Bush emphatically stating that Washington would target not only those behind the terror attacks but those who shelter them, the Taliban urged Washington not to attack.
"The stance of the Islamic Emirate (Afghanistan) . . . toward the probable American attack is that they should use logic and wisdom," Mr Jamal, told reporters in Kabul.
The Taliban insists that neither it nor bin Laden had the capacity to organise an international plot which saw trained pilots hijack passenger jets and crash them into the World Trade Centre towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
Bin Laden tried to deflect US retribution for the attacks, issuing a fresh denial of responsibility. "I am residing in Afghanistan. I have taken an oath of allegiance to (Mullah Omar) which does not allow me to do such things from Afghanistan," the multi-millionaire was quoted as saying in a statement in Arabic, sent by an aide from an unknown location in Afghanistan to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press. "We have been blamed in the past, but we were not involved."
The US had been demanding the surrender of bin Laden even before the latest attacks, accusing him of masterminding the simultaneous destruction of two US embassies in Africa in 1998.
His location in Afghanistan has always been a mystery and he is thought to move continually, but he is assumed to be based near Kandahar, home to the senior Taliban leadership and the effective capital city.
The US failed to hit bin Laden with a 1998 cruise missile attack on training camps for militants which he operates in Afghanistan. For the 20 million Afghans still in their country, the mounting prospects of a US attack triggered a rush to get families out of the cities. Thousands have flooded over the border to the overflowing refugee camps of Pakistan.
The United Nations and most non-governmental organisations had pulled out in the first days after the attacks. The ICRC withdrawal followed advice from the Taliban on Saturday that it could not guarantee the safety of any foreigner.
Afghanistan has faced war for more than two decades and for the past three years has suffered a drought which has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their villages in search of food.
"We sincerely hope that the great American people could differentiate between the people of Afghanistan and a handful of fundamentalist terrorists," said a statement from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan.