The supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has offered international forces a safe withdrawal from Afghanistan if they agreed to leave the war-torn nation immediately.
The message, posted on the internet, said the US and NATO troops would suffer a devastating defeat at the hands of the Taliban militia, like the Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
"I say to the invaders: if you leave our country, we will provide you the safe context to do so," Omar said in the statement marking the Muslim festival of Eid-al-Fitr.
"If you insist on your invasion, you will be defeated like the Russians before you."
The Red Army left Afghanistan in 1989 after a decade of fighting in which 10,000 Russian troops were killed.
Omar's Taliban movement took power in 1996 following a lengthy civil war.
In his message Omar, who has been in hiding since the fall of the Taliban government at the end of 2001, offered his support to anyone fighting foreign troops in Afghanistan.
"The Americans, with their advanced technology, could not have predicted their defeat but now, with God's help, every day they welcome their soldiers' dead bodies and are facing severe losses of lives and finance," he said.
"Several years ago, no one thought that Americans and their friends would face such hard resistance, that today the (Afghan) President and his ministers would beg for money, weapons and soldiers while no one gives a positive answer".
"They came to our country seven years ago and they have not succeeded in their targets - and they will never succeed, even in a hundred years," he added.
Neither the US-led coalition forces or the separate International Security Assistance Force, headed by NATO, have yet reacted to the offer.
This year has seen the most casualties for international forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion, with 221 troops killed in the the first nine months of 2008, most of Americans.
