ABC News Australia is reporting that the Taliban offered to give Osama bin Laden to the U.S. a year before the 9/11 attacks.

United States and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the September 11 attacks to discuss terms for the Afghans to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary. No agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001, which bin Laden subsequently hailed in a videotape as the work of his Al Qaeda network.

ZDF television quoted Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman, as saying he tried to broker a deal between the Americans and the purist Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, who were sheltering bin Laden. He quoted Taliban foreign minister Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil as saying: "You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him". [link via Buzzflash]