Foreign Minister of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan Wakil Ahmed Motewakel said he has instructed Taleban’s embassy in Islamabad to issue visas to diplomats from the United States, Australia and Germany to enter Afghanistan and meet their imprisoned national.

He did not emphasised.

An Afghan diplomat, requesting not to be identified, told the official Iranian news agency IRNA that said the westerners, including the families of two American female prisoners, identified as Dana Curry and Heather Mercer, could fly into Kabul on Tuesday.

The announcement marks an about-turn from the Taleban’s who, previously, had refused to allow access to the detainees, two Americans, two Australians, four Germans and 16 Afghans working for the Germany-based Shelter Now International.

The ultra-conservatives that rule over 90 per cent of the war-torn Afghanistan said they discovered copies of the holy Bible and Christian propaganda materials, including CDs in local languages from the organization's premises.

Meanwhile, and as promised earlier by the Taleban, staff of the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) visited the prisoners, who were arrested three weeks ago, accused by the Taleban authorities of illegally preaching Christianity in Afghanistan.

Four officials from the Geneva-based ICRC were allowed to see the aid workers on Sunday, when they delivered messages from their families.

There was no immediate information on their condition, or whether they met also with the Afghan detainees, although officials have insisted that the eight are being treated well.

The Taleban said they would allow western diplomats and prisoner’s families to meet them, as the first part of their investigation into the aid workers' activities had been completed.

Before the visit, ICRC spokesman Mario Musa has said that they would try to establish satisfactory condition for the visit, and that the detainees should be allowed to speak freely and receive and send family messages. He said they had also hoped to visit 16 Afghan colleagues of the aid workers, detained on similar charges.

Last week, diplomats from the U.S., Australia and Germany tried unsuccessfully to visit their nationals.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan had accused the Taleban of violating international law by denying the detainees consular access.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan is recognized by only neighbouring Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and has not a seat at the UN.

Mr Annan warned that the continued detention of the aid workers could affect crucial humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan, which is suffering from the effects of war, poverty and drought.

While, if convicted, the foreign aid workers would be deported from Afghanistan or get prison sentence, their 16 Afghan colleagues may face death, if proved that they were converted to Christianism, as Islam prohibits converting to any other faith.

Meanwhile, a hacker has broken into a pro-Taleban website, just hours after the Islamic authorities banned the use of the internet in Afghanistan.

On orders from the regime’s supreme leader Mollah Mohammad Omar, the authorities Saturday banned the use of Internet in Afghanistan and ordered the religious police to punish users according to Islamic law, the official radio station reported.

Omar said his headquarters in the fundamentalist militia's southern stronghold of Kandahar was the only authority allowed access to the technology and would vet all material posted by government departments.

The radio report gave no reason for the ban nor did it say what punishment awaited Internet users.

Virtually no one uses the Internet in Afghanistan, a country where television, cinema and pictures of living creatures are banned and only about eight people in every 1,000 have access to phone lines.

The hacker publicised the fact that, while the Taleban have banned their citizens from accessing the internet, they and their supporters have been using it for external publicity for years.

Why ban the internet, the hacker asks?

Next you'll be banning breathing and sleeping.

And don't, he or she says to the Taleban, try and say your rules are Islamic.