WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 3 October — The world stepped closer to war yesterday as the West sealed its case for destruction of the hard-line Taleban regime in Afghanistan and gave zero quarter to renewed pleas from Kabul to sit down and talk about it. As a fourth US aircraft carrier battle group steamed toward Southwest Asia, the United States and Britain served notice that the Kabul government was in the crosshairs for protecting Osama Bin Laden, top suspect in terror attacks on the United States.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization said it had seen, accepted and was ready to act on evidence tying Bin Laden sheltered by the Taleban to the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that left around 5,700 people dead or missing.
Afghanistan’s Taleban regime issued a fresh and desperate appeal for negotiations to avert war, but that plea, which also included another formal refusal to hand over Bin Laden, was promptly dismissed as “prevarication” by Washington.
The United States, moving to bolster shaky support for its war on terrorism among many Arab states, also dramatically re-engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said creation of a Palestinian state was part of its plan. At the same time, the US Defense Department announced that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was being sent to the Middle East to hold “significant consultations” with top officials in that region on the next step in the evolving war on terrorism.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, US President George W. Bush reiterated that the Taleban regime must immediately turn over Bin Laden and dismantle the Al-Qaeda network he leads which is based in Afghanistan. “There is no timetable for the Taleban, just like there are no negotiations,” Bush said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair also restated that demand and, in the most graphic and concrete rhetoric yet used by any world leader, made clear there was no more room for compromise and the Taleban regime would be targeted if it did not comply. “Surrender the terrorists or surrender power, that is your choice,” Blair said in a speech in England.
Failure to do so would trigger military action against the Taleban aimed at destroying the regime’s military assets including troops, supplies and finances. “We will put a trap around the regime,” Blair said.
NATO Secretary-General George Robertson, meanwhile, said the United States had supplied the alliance with “clear and compelling” proof that Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington.
Robertson said in Brussels that the evidence would allow NATO to activate, for the first time in its 52-year history a clause in the founding charter — Article Five — which states that an attack from abroad on one member is considered an attack on all.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, also in Brussels for talks with NATO, delivered another robust endorsement of the US-led campaign against terrorism and said Moscow “needs no proof” of Bin Laden’s guilt in the attacks.
Washington welcomed both Blair’s speech and NATO’s response to the evidence it presented, but declined to offer any clues on what that evidence was and flatly rejected a request from the Taleban to be given some of it too.
The Taleban Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said his government wanted to avert a war and pleaded for negotiations to defuse the crisis, hinting even that Kabul might be ready to discuss handing Bin Laden over to a third country. “We are prepared for negotiations,” Zaeef told reporters in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, adding that talks could include transfer of Bin Laden to “some country.”
The United States, however, quickly wrote off the Taleban request for talks and evidence. “I don’t address Taleban complaints,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said of the Taleban message: “That strikes me as a request for delay and prevarication. There should be no cause for delay.”
A Pakistani daily, The News, reported that US forces were hunting Bin Laden in northeastern Afghanistan’s isolated Pamir mountains where, it said, he and 1,000 followers had dug into a former Soviet base in the Wakhan Corridor.
And a British daily, The Guardian, wrote that US and British intelligence had a “pretty good idea” where Bin Laden was hiding and that he had been spotted recently in Kabul. There were increasing signs the Taleban were beginning to feel the pressure from domestic and international foes as opposition groups laid plans to replace the regime.
Earlier in the day, more than 10,000 protesters took to the streets of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar denouncing former King Zahir Shah, burning effigies of President Bush. At a similar rally in the eastern province of Paktia, local elders and tribal chiefs handed Taleban No. 2, Mullah Muhammad Hassan, a list of 6,000 people ready to participate in jihad (holy war) should the United States attack.
