KABUL, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai and President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan said Wednesday that U.S. authorities had not freed a top Taliban official, contradicting an earlier report from two Afghan officials.

Two Afghan officials said earlier that former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil had been released Monday, after 22 months of captivity, from the U.S. headquarters in Afghanistan at Bagram Air Base, just north of the capital of Kabul.

Muttawakil surrendered to U.S. forces in the southern city of Kandahar on Jan. 8, 2002. He was believed to have been transferred to the Bagram base.

Karzai, at a news conference, told reporters that Muttawakil had not been released.

The president then turned to U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and asked if U.S. authorities had released Muttawakil. Khalilzad said no.

U.S. officials at Bagram did not respond to e-mailed questions about the matter.

American authorities have not disclosed the names of prisoners at Bagram. Several Taliban members have been transferred to the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.

U.S. forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001 because of its support for al-Qaida. About 11,500 U.S.-led troops are still in Afghanistan hunting down remnants of the two groups.

Separately, suspected Taliban or al-Qaida insurgents fired three rockets at an airport in eastern Afghanistan, but no casualties or damage were reported, an official said Wednesday. The rockets were fired Sunday night and landed in a field near the airport on the outskirts of Jalalabad.