Envoy urged Osama's expulsion before 9/11

ANNE GEARAN

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a U.S. diplomat assured a top official of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime that international sanctions on that country would be lifted if it expelled Osama bin Laden, newly declassified documents show.

A State Department memo dated September 2000 also said the United States did not seek to topple the Taliban despite its record of human rights abuses.