WASHINGTONG/ISLAMABAD, 17 September — The Bush administration prepared America yesterday for a long fight against “terrorist” groups and increased the pressure on Osama Bin Laden, who Vice President Dick Cheney said was “no doubt” involved in last week’s attacks on the United States.
Pakistan said it will send a team of officials to Afghanistan today to press the ruling Taleban to hand over Bin Laden and help prevent a potential catastrophe in the region. “We are alive to the gravity of the situation and know that in the lives of nations such situations do arise as require taking of important decisions,” President Pervez Musharraf told a meeting of newspaper editors in Islamabad.
The delegation would fly to the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, base of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the leader of the Taleban.
Islamabad has asked for UN permission to make the flight because of sanctions on Afghanistan that forbid travel to the country, Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Maleeha Lodhi told CNN. The mission coincides with an urgent war council of Islamic scholars called in Kabul by Omar, who has refused to hand Bin Laden over to the West. CNN said Pakistan would give the Taleban an ultimatum to hand over the 44-year-old within three days. A spokesman for Musharraf said he had no knowledge of a deadline.
In off-the-record briefings, the military leader revealed details of a phone conversation with US President George W. Bush on Saturday, saying Bush appeared likely to look to Pakistan for logistical support in prosecuting the first war of the 21st century. His comment was reported by a source familiar with the content of the meeting who declined to be identified.
Pakistan’s president said the United States could base its troops either in Pakistan or neighboring Afghanistan, but added he had no concrete details, the source said. In addition, he said it was possible US ships would want access to Pakistan’s coast to reach landlocked Afghanistan, a request Islamabad would be able to meet, the source said.
Yesterday Bin Laden personally denied any involvement. “I have taken an oath of allegiance (to the Taleban leader) which does not allow me to do such things from Afghanistan,” he said in a statement faxed by an aide to the Afghan Islamic Press.
But Cheney would not accept the denial. “I have no doubt that he and his organization played a significant role in this,” he said. “We are quite confident ... that he is in fact the prime suspect,” Cheney said in his first television interview since Tuesday’s attacks.
The vice president also warned on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Americans face a battle that could take a “long time, probably years.”
Bush administration officials said yesterday they are considering several changes in US law to strengthen the effort to combat terror, including the prohibition on assassination. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the review would include all pertinent Us laws, including the 1976 executive order enacted by President Gerald Ford banning US personnel from engaging in, or conspiring to engage in, assassinations.
“It’s still on the books and as part of our campaign plan we are examining everything — how the CIA does its work, how the FBI and Justice Department do their work, are there laws that need to be changed and new laws brought into effect to give us more ability to deal with this kind of threat?” Powell said on CNN’s “Late Edition” program. “So everything is under review.”
US forces trained for unconventional warfare will play a big role in battling those behind terror attacks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. “It will have to be a broad effort over a long period of time — going after their finances, tracking them down,” he said on the “Fox News Sunday” program. “A lot of it’s law enforcement. A lot of it will be special operations.”
In highlighting special operations, Rumsfeld gave perhaps the clearest sign yet of how Washington may attack states it accuses of aiding Bin Laden. Special operations include slipping undetected across borders, illuminating targets for precision-guided missiles and sabotage inside enemy territory. Other missions include psychological operations to court the hearts and minds of local residents as well as training, equipping and directing local anti-government guerrilla forces.
Rumsfeld said the 35,000 to 40,000 members of US Special Operations Forces — including Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEAL teams and Air Force Special Tactics groups — were “important to our country.” “They’re unconventional, and we’re dealing in an unconventional time and we may very well need more of them,” he said.
The United States struggled to recover from the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington that left more than 5,000 people dead or missing. The New York Stock Exchange, just three blocks from the rubble remains of the twin 110-story trade center towers, was scheduled to reopen today for the first time since the attacks. Cheney said the country was “quite possibly” in a recession right now but he was optimistic about the markets reopening. The specter of innocent people being killed in a US-led anti-terrorist operation has done little to dull the US public’s appetite for such a move, two polls have revealed. By a majority of 75 percent, Americans responding to a New York Times/CBS survey published yesterday said they favored a military response to the terror strikes — even if innocent people abroad were to lose their lives.
A Newsweek poll released Saturday disclosed that 71 percent wanted to see military action to stamp out terrorism and were undaunted by the possibility of civilian casualties in countries that shelter terrorists.
“I don’t like the idea of American lives being lost in a war,” Virginia Harrison, 56, a housewife in Tallahassee, Fla. told the Times.
“But we can’t just sit here and let them continue to do it because they will probably do it again.” Said another respondent, Joy Hess, 58, of Medford, Oregon: “I’m not talking about revenge, but justice.”
