Author: Stuart Doughty and Sayed
Salahuddin
Publication: Reuters
Date: November 1, 2001
The United States cannot afford
to halt its military campaign in Afghanistan for the Muslim fasting month
of Ramadan and is planning to put more troops on the ground, officials
said on Thursday as Osama bin Laden sought to portray the conflict as a
war against Islam.
On a day of reduced bombing raids
by U.S. aircraft against targets in Afghanistan, U.S. officials emphasized
that the military campaign against the country's ruling Taliban and the
al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, could not pause for Ramadan later
this month.
Ignoring pleas on Thursday by Egypt
and Indonesia, which joined Pakistan in calling for a halt to the bombing
during the Islamic holy month, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza
Rice said the United States planned to fight on.
"This is an enemy that has to be
taken on and taken on aggressively and pressed to the end and we're going
to continue to do that. We have to continue the military action," Rice
said. "We can't afford to have a pause."
She added that bin Laden and al
Qaeda network had "never demonstrated that they were observant of any kind
of rules of civilization before."
Bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant
blamed by Washington for the Sept. 11 airliner attacks on the United States
which killed up to 4,800 people, said in a letter broadcast by Qatar's
al Jazeera television that the U.S. operation to punish Afghanistan for
harboring him was a Christian crusade.
At pains to deflect bin Laden's
efforts to present the conflict as Christianity versus Islam, U.S. President
George W. Bush and his allies have stressed that the campaign in the central
Asian nation is purely to hunt down bin Laden and members of his al Qaeda
network and in no way represented a war on Islam.
"Osama bin Laden called on Muslims
in Pakistan to stand in the face of what he called a Christian crusade
against Islam," a Jazeera newsreader quoted the letter as saying. Pakistan
has allied itself with the United States.
"Muslims in Afghanistan are being
subjected to killing and the Pakistani government is standing beneath the
Christian banner," the letter was quoted as saying.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
on a Middle East tour to boost Arab backing for the campaign, voiced support
for Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf who he said "is trying to do
his best for the people of Pakistan." His spokesman said the letter "removes
any doubts that he (bin Laden) is about anything other than destabilizing
the region."
About 600 Pakistani tribesmen crossed
into Afghanistan on Thursday to join the Taliban's holy war on America.
The United States is pressing Pakistan
to halt the tide of militants crossing into Afghanistan to join the Taliban,
a senior Bush administration official said.
"What we want is no one going in
(to Afghanistan) to support the Taliban and we want any terrorist that
leaves Afghanistan to be interned and interrogated...This is an issue that
we are raising and will be raising again," he said.
Working to rally American and international
support for the war on terrorism, Bush plans next week a series of speeches
to U.S. and foreign audiences, and meetings with key allies including Blair
and French President Jacques Chirac as well as the leaders of India, Brazil,
Ireland and Algeria.
And in an effort to respond more
rapidly to claims made by the Taliban and to sway Muslim opinion, the United
States and Britain will team up "to help provide accurate and timely information
on the war against terrorism to the international community," White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
"CREDIBLE" THREAT TO CALIFORNIA
BRIDGES
America, already alarmed by the
spread of deadly anthrax bacteria on the East Coast and fearing more attacks
after the government put police on a state of high alert this week, were
told that California's major bridges could be the next target.
California Gov. Gray Davis said
he had received "credible" information indicating the state's major suspension
bridges -- including San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge -- could be bombed
in a rush-hour attack between Friday and next Wednesday.
"The best preparation is to let
the terrorists know we know what you're up to, we're ready, it's not going
to succeed," Davis said.
In Washington, military leaders
were slowly increasing the war effort with plans to put more special forces
into Afghanistan and considering adding two new spy planes to the fleet
of aircraft pounding the country.
The small number of U.S. troops
operating in hostile territory also may be joined by special forces from
Britain and Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member state.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said the military would be reinforcing its special forces on the ground.
"We are going to be adding people
to have a reasonable cluster of American special forces who are able to
be in there, serve as liaison, assist with the communication, assist with
the targeting," Rumsfeld told reporters.
Rumsfeld said there had been problems
putting in the extra troops. "It is difficult to do for a host of reasons.
Weather is one problem ... recently ground fire was a situation that prevented
some teams from getting in," he said.
He said elite helicopter-borne U.S.
troops were forced to abort recent attempts to enter Afghanistan.
"Ground fire was simply too heavy
to unload the folks and so they went back and they'll try it again in a
different landing area," Rumsfeld said on the 26th day of air strikes.
Washington said for the first time
on Tuesday that the United States had a number of troops -- one official
said it was dozens, but fewer than 100 -- in northern Afghanistan helping
to guide U.S. attacks from the ground.
In addition to more troops, Rumsfeld
said ammunition and food were being sent to anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
"We're not only trying to increase
the numbers that are doing that (opposing the Taliban), we're trying to
improve their success, and to the extent we can provide, get people in
with them and provide the targeting to help us," he said.
In London, the British government
gave its clearest signal yet on Thursday that its troops will see action
in Afghanistan. "At times we may need to deploy forces within Afghanistan,"
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told parliament.
TURKISH TROOPS TO ENTER AFGHANISTAN
And in Ankara, Turkey announced
it would send around 90 special forces troops to Afghanistan to help train
the U.S.-backed opposition battling the ruling Taliban.
Foreign Minister Ismail Cem said
the forces, which might also be sent to neighboring Uzbekistan, would send
a "message to everyone this is not a war against Islam" but against terrorism.
Turkey, which has close intelligence
links with Afghan opposition warlords, said it would also help forge a
new wide-based administration in case the Taliban fell and "help our Afghan
brothers achieve stability and peace."
There were no reports overnight
of bombing in Kabul or on Taliban front lines north of the capital that
for the first time were carpet-bombed on Wednesday by a giant B- 52 bomber.
In Kabul, the Taliban said they
repulsed the first joint air and ground attack by U.S. and opposition forces
in the north but lost a power plant to U.S. bombing in the south.
One Alliance source said an attack
had taken place but a spokesman sought to play down its importance.
The air raids blacked out Afghanistan's
second city, Kandahar, the powerbase of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad
Omar.
The Taliban said they shot down
an American plane and had arrested several U.S. citizens, which U.S. officials
denied.
In the United States, the death
of a fourth person from inhaled anthrax continued to mystify officials
tracking its source and raised questions over whether the outbreak might
be more widespread than originally thought.
Anthrax spores have been spread
through the mail in tainted letters. But authorities cannot say how or
where the fourth fatality from the disease, a 61-year-old New York hospital
supply clerk, became infected. There has been no suspicious letter and
no traces of anthrax where she worked.
Four mailrooms at U.S. Food and
Drug Administration buildings in the Rockville, Maryland, area tested positive
for anthrax in preliminary tests, adding to similar findings at many government
offices including White House, CIA, congressional, State Department and
Supreme Court facilities.
Although no evidence has been found
tying the anthrax attacks to bin Laden, officials said they might be linked.
As the United States grapples with
the anthrax deaths, Bush proposed on Thursday making it a crime to buy,
sell or make biological weapons and creating a U.N. system to investigate
suspected germ warfare.
Florida officials said armed soldiers
would guard the state's four major seaports and two nuclear power plants,
joining troops already stationed at major airports in response to the Sept.
11 attacks on the United States.
