WASHINGTON/KABUL, 11 January — US President George W. Bush warned both Iran and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat yesterday not to undermine his "war on terror", as US forces in Afghanistan bombed a former base of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda movement.
Bush called on Arafat to "renounce terror" and warned Tehran not to interfere in Afghanistan’s post-Taleban settlement, while his forces resumed their bombing of a suspected Al-Qaeda base in Afghanistan’s eastern mountains.
Asked about reports that Iran was harboring Al-Qaeda fugitives and seeking to undermine US influence on Afghanistan’s US-backed government, Bush warned them they could face some form of US action. "If they in any way shape or form try to destabilize the government, the coalition (waging the US-led war on terrorism) will deal with them, in diplomatic ways initially," the president told reporters.
The Iranian government rejected as "unfounded" a warning from Bush. "We reject the comments of Mr. George W. Bush. These are unfounded comments that rely on undocumented information," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi, in a statement in Tehran received by AFP.
"Iran used all the means at its disposal to oppose the inhuman phenomenon," he said, speaking of Afghanistan’s former ruling Taleban regime, "even before the international community was worried by the terrorist groups in Afghanistan."
Meanwhile, a US base in Kandahar came under small arms fire from unidentified assailants yesterday shortly after a US military transport plane took off with the first group of prisoners from Afghanistan to a US navy base in Cuba, a military spokesman said in Kabul.
"The forward operating base in Kandahar has received small arms fire at about 1625 GMT today. Marines at the base and Afghan forces are in the process of dealing with that threat," said Navy Commander Frank Merriman, a spokesman for the US Central Command."
Earlier yesterday, US warplanes renewed their pounding of a former Al-Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan as interim leader Hamid Karzai promised free speech and a market economy, warning against "the rule of the gun" in his war-ravaged country. US airstrikes that began last week against a huge Al-Qaeda complex in the Zhawar region of eastern Afghanistan resumed Wednesday evening and lasted until yesterday morning, the Afghan Islamic Press news agency said.
Fifty more US soldiers were helicoptered to the area late Wednesday to join 100 men already there, the Pakistan-based news agency added. In his first televised address to the nation since he was sworn in for a six-month term on Dec. 22, Karzai said the new constitution would guarantee "freedom of speech and of the press, and also political and social freedom."
