Taliban to CNN: Get Out of Here

By Stephen M. Silverman

Wednesday September 19, 2001 11:24 AM EDT

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Afghanistan's ruling Taliban may be playing host to Osama bin Laden, but the hard-line military government wants CNN out of its country, the U.S. cable news channel said on Wednesday. (CNN, like PEOPLE, is part of AOL Time Warner.) Nic Robertson, reporting from the Taliban headquarters of Kandahar, is one of the last remaining western journalists in Afghanistan which is braced for possible strikes by the U.S. after last week's attacks on America. "We understand now that the ruling has come from the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, that absolutely no exception can be made at this time . . . our time has come," Robertson said on the air. The station told Reuters that it was petitioning the Taliban for permission to stay. Most Westerners have already evacuated Afghanistan.