WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 22 September — Afghanistan’s ruling Taleban yesterday rejected an ultimatum from US President George W. Bush to surrender Osama Bin Laden or face military strikes, as Wall Street markets headed toward the end of their worst week since the Great Depression 70 years ago.
At the New York Stock Exchange, a few blocks from where two hijacked airliners flattened the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 leaving more than 6,800 people dead or missing, investors dumped shares for the fifth straight day.
Wall Street has tossed major stock indexes down 15 percent to three-year lows as the devastation caused by the suicide attacks sparked massive layoffs, recession fears and plans for military retaliation. Not since the Great Crash of 1929 ushered in a decade-long slump has Wall Street seen such a week with some $1.2 trillion in investor wealth evaporating by Thursday’s close.
Bush in a speech to a joint session of Congress on Thursday night (early Friday Kingdom time) laid the ground for an all-out assault on those he called enemies of freedom.
With the United States rapidly deploying planes and aircraft carrier groups to the Middle East and Indian Ocean, the president demanded Afghanistan’s rulers hand over Bin Laden and all his top associates and open their camps to US inspection or share their fate.
“Whether we bring our enemies to justice or justice to our enemies, justice will be done,” Bush said in a hard-hitting and determined address in which he pledged to defeat all terrorist organizations “with a global reach” as well as the states that support them. The Central Asian country reacted defiantly to Bush’s ultimatum. “We are not ready to hand over Osama Bin Laden without evidence,” Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, said in Islamabad.
He said the government was not bound by an edict from leading Afghan scholars on Thursday declaring Bin Laden should be persuaded to leave the country “whenever possible.”
The toll from the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington together with the crash of a fourth hijacked plane in Pennsylvania now exceeds 6,800 dead or missing. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said that number could still change but not substantially.
The United States continued to move diplomatically to shore up support. A senior Western diplomat in Islamabad said Washington would soon lift sanctions against India and Pakistan imposed after their 1998 nuclear tests and would reschedule $600 million in Pakistani debt.
Leaders of the 15-nation EU agreed yesterday that US retaliation for the terrorist attacks last week is “legitimate”, but stressed the riposte should be “targeted” and carried out under UN auspices, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt announced.
The EU leaders also agreed that retaliatory actions “can also be directed against states that aid, support or provide refuge to terrorists,” said Verhofstadt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency. “On the basis of Resolution 1368 of the United Nations Security Council, an American riposte is legitimate,” he said, referring to a resolution adopted by the world body which recognized Washington’s right of legitimate defense over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
He said that the 15 EU members “demand a global coalition under UN auspices” to combat the terrorist threat. Verhofstadt was speaking at a press conference during an emergency EU summit meeting called over the terror attacks.
Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed fears that the world was on the threshold of a large-scale war. In an interview with Germany’s ARD television station, part of which was shown on Russian networks, Putin said Russia’s intelligence services were ready to work even more closely with the United States in the “fight against terrorism”. “I believe there is no basis for the suggestion that mankind faces the danger of moving toward a large-scale military confrontation,” the Russian leader said.
“I don’t believe anything of this sort will happen. The leaders of the world’s most prominent countries will not allow it. There should be no such danger.”
But international public opinion was mostly opposed to Washington’s military plans, according to a Gallup poll in 31 countries. Around 80 percent of Europeans and around 90 percent of South Americans favored extradition and a court verdict against those responsible for the attacks.
FBI agents yesterday broadened their hunt for people who could help expose the deadly terrorist ring that struck the United States last week. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has dramatically extended its list of people it wants to question in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, an agent said. “We have now 237 individuals on our new watch list,” said the agent, who asked not to be identified. The list previously included 190 names of people who may be able to help identify and track down those behind the attacks.
Investigators are seeking to identify a possible terrorist controller who directed the operation. The New York Times reported yesterday that detectives were trying to trace an older man who was allegedly seen visiting some of the suspected hijackers in at least two states prior to the assault. “If you are preparing such an operation from overseas, you will want a sort of higher commander to coordinate the operations on the ground,” said Peter Crooks, a former FBI agent who is an expert in the fight against terrorism.
“So there would have to be someone who has an overall understanding and who would be in touch with all the individuals involved,” he said, adding that such a key figure would have the complete trust of the terrorists’ leaders.According to Crooks,“This guy has to be from the inner circle of Bin Laden.”
US authorities are holding at least four material witnesses — individuals believed to have information vital to the case — as well as 75 others who may be able to shed light on the attack, although most of those are being held on immigration concerns.
But investigators are refusing to say exactly how many people are in detention, 11 days after they launched an unprecedented worldwide probe in which some 7,000 investigators, including 4,000 federal agents, have been mobilized. Some of them were yesterday quizzing 34-year-old Nabil Marabh, arrested near Chicago on Wednesday on suspicion of having aided the 19 men of Middle Eastern descent who the FBI has said hijacked the planes.
Yesterday French police said they had arrested seven people suspected of belonging to extremist groups and thought to be planning attacks on US interests in France, including the American Embassy in Paris. Police made the arrests early yesterday after an Algerian man being held in the United Arab Emirates was alleged to have confessed to planning an attack on the embassy and gave names and addresses of other extremists in Paris, police sources said. At least one of the suspects had been in contact with the Algerian held in Dubai, and others had been under police surveillance since his arrest in July, the sources said.
