Afghanistan's ruling Taliban said that they want to improve ties with the United States but accused Washington of not giving a positive response to its offer to solve the thorny issue of Osama bin Laden, news reaching said on November 3.

"We want to improve relations with the United States on bilateral cooperation but we want the United States to help achieve this goal," the Taliban's Foreign Minister Maulvi Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil told a news conference in Kabul.

He ruled out the possibility of bin Laden's handover to the United States and said Washington should have positively responded to Taliban proposals to settle the dispute over the alleged terrorist.

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar Tuesday threatened to close talks over bin Laden if the United States stuck to its demand for the Saudi national's extradition.

Bin Laden, who has been accused by Washington of masterminding terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa last year, wrote a letter to Omar last Friday offering to leave Afghanistan provided the militia facilitate his movement and keep his next destination secret.

Reacting to bin Laden's letter, a U.S. State Department spokesman said that simply banishing the Saudi national from Afghanistan was not the same as bringing him to justice. "Washington wants to put him on trial," the spokesman said.

Mutawakil said the Taliban seek a solution to the bin Laden issue, but the United States wants to keep it unresolved to make it a basis for its "anti-Islamic" and bias intentions.

The U.S. response to bin Laden's desire to leave Afghanistan shows that it does not want a peaceful solution to the problem, he added.

He said the United States earlier asked the Taliban to expel bin Laden and now when he has offered to leave Afghanistan, Washington has changed its stand.

The Taliban foreign minister said the Taliban floated two proposals to the United States to find a peaceful solution to the long-standing controversy but Washington responded in negative.

The Taliban "offered talks on the issue and also proposed to let religious scholars take a decision in accordance with Islam," but both of them were turned down by the United States, he said.