NUCLEAR
A pivotal meeting for Russia, US
Bush agrees to deep cuts in U.S. nuclear arsenal
Bush, Putin Want Fewer Nukes
Text From Bush News Conference
Urgent priority for nuclear terrorism
Bush, Putin to Reduce Nuke Arms
Interviewer Calls bin Laden Aggressively 'Changed Man'
Can Bush and Putin Control Russia's Arsenal?
Protesters Fail to Prevent Franco-German Nuclear Shipment
Controversial nuclear convoy sets off for Germany
Germany prepares for demos on nuclear convoy route
Banish the bomb
U.S. Says Aid to Pakistan Won't Include F-16 Fighters
Japan, US to Review Japan War Plan
Accident Shuts Down Japan Plant
Missile Shield Program Still Costly
Russian Official Reveals Attempt Made to Steal Nuclear Materials
A Summit Topic: Russia's Plutonium
Bush Promises Warheads Reduction
Nuclear Arms History Numbers
MILITARY
Between the two extremes
Caught in lethal crossfire
Northern Alliance enters Kabul as Taliban flee
'Up to 500 executed' after the fall of Mazar
Taliban deserts Kabul, rebels move into capital
Executions of P.O.W.'s Cast Doubts on Alliance
Peace plan would aid rival tribes
Gun Foes Use Terror Issue in a Push for Stricter Laws
Anthrax vaccine manufacturer faces FDA, veterans' scrutiny
Rapid Diagnosis Helps Anthrax Victims
Myanmar Reassigns 10 Senior Generals
Rebel attacks hinder Plan Colombia
ANF seizes 131 heroin-filled capsules
Death of a Child: How Israel's Army Responds
US to provide Nepal 10 copters to fight terrorism
Armed forces capable of meeting any threat, says Musharraf
In Pakistan, It's Jihad 101
Gains by Northern Alliance Mean Losses by Pakistan
UN Pressured to Unite Afghan Groups
Blair: U.N. presence needed in Afghanistan
Opposition invites U.N. to help with new government
U.N. envoy calls for transitional government
Musharraf seeks Muslim U.N. force
Bush Orders : Terror Trials by Military
Terrorist trials to be by military commission
USS Stennis headed for Persian Gulf
ENERGY AND OTHER
Bush wants emergency petroleum stockpile filled
Administration waves flag for oil
Many of world's lakes face death, expert warns
Full-Body Scans Promise to Identify Disease Before Symptoms Occur
WTO to foster China-Taiwan ties
POLICE / PRISONERS
U.S. SENATOR THOMAS DASCHLE
Justice Dept. wants to interview 5,000 foreign men
Embattled Illinois Sheriff Resigns
Experts Divided on New Antiterror Policy
Lessons From Sept. 11
Four convicted in 1986 Berlin disco bombing
ACTIVISTS
Loving his neighbor via protest
Trading Up in Qatar
Antitrade activists face tough sell
Hundreds protest disputed German nuclear waste shipment
The Coming Apocalypse
Justice and development, not war is answer
Token hunger strike against factory's privatisation
-------- NUCLEAR
A pivotal meeting for Russia, US
November 13, 2001
By Howard LaFranchi
The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1113/p1s3-usgn.html
WASHINGTON - The direct telephone line between the Kremlin and the White House was installed to head off Armageddon, but after the Sept. 11 attacks, it was used for a less ominous purpose.
Russian President Vladimir Putin called to say his country was suspending military movements to avoid confusion. "We are standing down. We want to help," is what Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, recalls Mr. Putin telling her boss. To Ms. Rice, it was "a crystallizing moment for the end of the cold war."
Yet, as significant as the moment may have been for US-Russia relations, the legacy of seeing the other as the enemy cannot be overcome so easily. Experts in both countries say the old foes are not so far ahead of where they were a decade ago, after the Soviet Union collapsed. They say it will take a long process to forge ties of trust.
As a summit meeting begins today that will take Putin to the White House and to the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, a chasm lies between the hope for better ties and the reality of tough issues to settle.
Some analysts such as Rice - herself a US-Russian-relations expert - are heralding the dawn of a new era of peaceful, mutually beneficial, and "normal" relations. "There's never been a time when US-Russian interests have been so aligned as right now," says Robert Strauss, a former US ambassador to Moscow.
But for others, "normal" is not a word that is likely to apply for years to come. "The direction [of relations] is promising, but Russia is not our ally," says Michael McFaul, a Stanford University professor with a new book entitled, "Russia's Unfinished Revolution." "If you look at the list of potential areas of conflict" - missile defense, NATO, Iran, Iraq, the US presence in central Asia - "you see some very serious issues that have yet to be resolved," he says.
The relationship is not normal, says Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, because "we're still in the mode of thinking about Russia through the security prism." As long as the relationship is dominated by such issues as nuclear proliferation and missile defense, "we're still at the point of mopping up residual issues of the cold war."
To be sure, a shift from traditional security positions and issues is accelerating in the wake of Sept. 11. For example, the benefits Russia might reap from a cooperative role in the war on terrorism have prompted Putin to stand down from old positions on NATO expansion. Determined to see potential benefit rather than a threat in heightened US interest in central Asia, Putin will spend a day in Houston meeting with business leaders as a step toward developing Russia's energy potential.
Part of the skepticism toward the current euphoria over US-Russia relations is born of a feeling that "we've been here before." That sentiment is especially keen in Russia.
"We effectively lost a decade in our efforts to join Western civilization," says Alexander Konovalov, director of the independent Institute for Strategic Assessments in Moscow. "We had a romantic idea about the process we had embarked on, and when our society ran into difficulties, we became quickly disillusioned."
Western "behavior" wasn't what Russians anticipated, either. Just two years ago, NATO's military campaign in Kosovo - part of Yugoslavia, a Russian ally - shocked Russian communists and liberals alike.
"Russian democrats had always argued NATO was incapable of aggression because it was controlled by 16 parliaments," Mr. Konovalov says. "That was a dark time for our relations with the West."
Despite former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's pleading that Russia just wanted to be "a normal European country," it simply wasn't ready for any significant steps in that direction, analysts say.
A decade ago, Russia was facing three key challenges at once: a rethinking of the Soviet state, the conundrum of economic reform, and a redefinition of Russia's place in the world - all while America was embarking on a gilded decade of unrivaled economic and political power.
Add to that "a whole series of perceived slights" against Russia, according to Ms. Hill - including NATO expansion into former Soviet territory and NATO's move into the Balkans - and the roadblocks to improved relations were simply too high.
But today, the situation is very different. Russia's economic revival may still be in its infancy, but over the past two years, Putin has jump-started stalled reforms, and the economy is now growing notably. Madison Avenue couldn't have done better turning around the country's '90s image of a lawless, corrupt, robber-baron state than Putin, a former KGB recruiting officer.
In the meantime, the US has fallen into a recession and is engaged in a war that challenges its old concept of security. "In the '90s, the US was in a dream world, while Russia was living a nightmare," says Clifford Gaddy, a specialist in the Russian economy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Post Sept. 11, it's something of the reverse."
Perhaps the biggest shift that augurs well for progress in relations is that, as Hill says, "The US now needs Russia in a way it didn't before."
If Putin is so willing to work with the US in the war on terrorism, experts say it is because he considers this war the best hope of corralling what he saw as the superpower's most dangerous tendency: to think it is invincible, and that it can act alone in the post-cold-war world.
"For Putin, the post-Sept.-11 world offers an opportunity to shift the US away from the illusion that it is leading a unipolar world," says Mr. Gaddy. That helps explain why Russia resists the Bush administration's idea of nuclear-arsenal reduction by "handshake" rather than by formal treaty.
For the Russian leader, says Hill, this is the moment to "enmesh the US in a broader multilateral framework."
• Fred Weir contributed to this report from Moscow.
---
Bush agrees to deep cuts in U.S. nuclear arsenal
USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/nov01/2001-11-13-bush-putin.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Tuesday the United States will reduce its arsenal of strategic nuclear warheads by two-thirds or more over the next decade - to between 1,700 and 2,200.
The resulting force will be "fully consistent with American security," he said after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bush said he and Putin retain differing viewpoints on the American plans to develop a missile defense shield, and "we will continue dialogue and discussion" on the subject.
At a joint White House news conference, Bush also said he would work to "end the application" of Cold War-era legislation that restricted trade.
The president said he and Putin also had agreed to support a United Nations call for a "broadly based and multiethnic" government in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban.
Wednesday
Putin stops in Houston for a meeting with former President Bush and a speech at Rice University to business leaders. The Bushes welcome Putin and his wife, Lyudmila, to Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, where they have a chuck-wagon picnic dinner and remain overnight.
Thursday
The presidents meet in private at the Bush ranch. Putin visits a Crawford school and addresses the news media at the nearby Waco, Texas, airport on departure for New York, where he tours the ruins of the World Trade Center and takes questions on a National Public Radio call-in show. The Bushes remain in Crawford for a long weekend.
"Russia and America share the same threat and share the same resolve" to battle terrorism, he said. "We will fight and defeat terrorist networks wherever" they exist.
Emerging from more than three hours of talks, Bush said the discussions with Putin herald "a new day in the long history of Russian-American relations, a day of progress and a day of hope."
Putin, who spoke after Bush, echoed his remarks.
"We intend to dismantle conclusively the vestiges of the Cold War," Putin said.
Putin said his government would try to respond in kind to Bush's pledge to reduce nuclear arsenals.
The United States currently has roughly 7,000 intercontinental nuclear warheads. Russia has an estimated 5,800.
Putin also reaffirmed that Russia and the United States continue to disagree about the missile defense shield.
Bush came to office pledging to develop a shield, even if it meant scrapping the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty negotiated with the Soviet Union.
In deference to Putin's assistance in the war against terrorism, though, the administration recently announced a delay in some missile defense tests, saying it wanted to avoid bumping up against the treaty's prohibitions.
Bush's comment about trade restrictions referred to the 1974 Jackson-Vanik legislation. Designed to lift emigration curbs on Jews and other minorities, it forced the Soviet Union to permit mass departures in order to qualify for trade privileges.
"Russia is fundamentally a different place," Bush said.
Because of progress on Jewish migration, he said "my administration will work with Congress to end the application of Jackson-Vanik to Russia."
Bush said he and Putin had spent considerable time discussing the situation in Afghanistan, where the ruling Taliban abandoned the capital city of Kabul overnight.
Bush said the withdrawal signaled that "we're making great progress in our objective, and that is to tighten the net and eventually bring al-Qa'eda to justice and at the same time deal with the government that's been harboring them."
Bush made clear he hasn't changed his views on the ABM Treaty, Putin's concerns notwithstanding. "I'm convinced the treaty is outdated and we have to move beyond it," he said.
He added he expects the two sides will continue their discussions on the topic.
He and Putin are scheduled to meet again Wednesday and again Thursday at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Bush said he had adopted a new approach on arms control, one based on trust that does not require "endless hours of arms control discussions."
"I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand. But if you need to write it down on a piece of paper I'll be glad to do that. We don't need arms control negotiations to reduce our weaponry in a significant way."
The two presidents lunched in the mansion's Blue Room and then addressed reporters in the East Room from two brand-new lecterns specially designed for Bush and built by hand by the White House Communications Agency.
Bush said repeatedly that the Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan have pledged they would not occupy Kabul, the capital.
Asked whether Northern Alliance leaders should be treated favorably because of their presence in the city, Bush said, "there is no preferential place at the bargaining table. All people will be treated the same."
------
Bush, Putin Want Fewer Nukes
By Sonya Ross
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 5:59 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23562-2001Nov13?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Tuesday that they should reach a consensus on reducing their nuclear arsenals. They just couldn't agree on whether to write it down.
Putin made clear that Russia wants its arms reduction agreements in treaty form. Bush, envisioning tedious negotiations, said he would prefer something more along the lines of a gentlemen's agreement.
"A new relationship based upon trust and cooperation is one that doesn't need endless hours of arms control discussions," Bush said. "My attitude is, 'Here's what we can live with, and so I've announced the level that we'll stick by.' ... I looked the man in the eye and shook his hand, and if we need to write it down on a piece of paper, I'll be glad to do that."
The two leaders admitted after their first White House meeting that neither of them have budged on the idea of abandoning a 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty that undergirds U.S.-Russian arms agreements. Although Bush offered numbers for shrinking the U.S. stockpile by two-thirds - to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads - Putin wants written proposals, with a system of checks and balances.
Neither would budge on that position.
"For the Russian part, (we) are prepared to present all our agreements in a treaty form, including the issues of verification and control," Putin said.
Bush replied, "Let me say this: We don't need arms control negotiations to reduce our weaponry in a significant way."
Ironically, the Russian president's posture was in line with that of President Reagan, who injected the notion of "trust but verify" in negotiating weapons reductions with the Soviet Union.
Bush administration officials said last week that while they were skeptical of many U.S.-Soviet accords, they favored retaining verification provisions from the 1991 START treaty that Bush's father reached with Russia.
Arms control observers said the younger Bush's disdain for arms paperwork was alarming, especially since he is seeking deals that would endure long past his and Putin's terms in office.
Without a treaty, it would be difficult to make those agreements stick, said former U.S. arms negotiator Spurgeon Keeny, longtime head of the Arms Control Association and now a senior fellow with the National Academy of Sciences.
"What's the schedule on who goes first, who does what?" Keeny said. "If it's going to be some kind of gentlemen's agreement, that may be better than nothing but it's far short of establishing a foundation for long-range decision making."
Peter Scoblic, editor of Arms Control Today magazine, said achieving a written agreement does not necessarily have to be as tedious as Bush thinks. Since much of the diplomacy was done under START I and II, a new pact would simply be a matter of political will, he said.
"They (Bush and Putin) can do that and do it relatively quickly," Scoblic said. "What we get out of that is a mechanism to watch the Russians as they reduce the arsenals."
---
Text From Bush News Conference
The Associated Press
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 3:56 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22835-2001Nov13?language=printer
Text of Tuesday's White House news conference with President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as transcribed by eMediaMillWorks Inc.
BUSH: It's a great honor for me to welcome President Vladimir Putin to the White House, and to welcome his wife as well.
This is a new day in the long history of Russian-American relations, a day of progress and a day of hope. The United States and Russia are in the midst of the transformation of a relationship that will yield peace and progress. We're transforming our relationship from one of hostility and suspicion to one based on cooperation and trust that will enhance opportunities for peace and progress for our citizens and for people all around the world.
The challenge of terrorism makes our close cooperation on all issues even more urgent. Russia and America share the same threat and the same resolve. We will fight and defeat terrorist networks wherever they exist.
Our highest priority is to keep terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Today we agreed that Russian and American experts will work together to share information and expertise to counter the threat from bioterrorism. We agreed that it is urgent that we improve the physical protection and accounting of nuclear materials and prevent illicit nuclear trafficking.
And we will strengthen our efforts to cut off every possible source of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons materials and expertise.
Today, we also agreed to work more closely to combat organized crime and drug trafficking, a leading source of terrorist financing. Both nations are committed to the reconstruction of Afghanistan once hostilities there have ceased and the Taliban are no longer in control. We support the U.N.'s efforts to fashion a post-Taliban government that is broadly based and multiethnic. The new government must export neither terror not drugs, and it must respect fundamental human rights.
As Russia and the United States work more closely to meet new 21st century threats, we're also working hard to put the threats of the 20th century behind us once and for all, and we can report great progress.
The current levels of our nuclear forces do not reflect today's strategic realities. I have informed President Putin that the United States will reduce our operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade, a level fully consistent with American security.
Russia and the United States have also had vast discussions about our defensive capabilities, the ability to defend ourselves as we head into the 21st century.
We have different points of view about the ABM Treaty. And we will continue dialogue and discussions about the ABM Treaty, so that we may be able to develop a new strategic framework that enables both of us to meet the true threats of the 21st century as partners and friends, not as adversaries.
The spirit of partnership that now runs through our relationship is allowing the United States and Russia to form common approaches to important regional issues. In the Middle East, we agree that all parties must take practical actions to ease tensions so that peace talks can resume. We urge the parties to move without delay to implement the Tenet work plan and the Mitchell report recommendations.
In Europe, we share a vision of a European Atlantic community whole, free and at peace, one that includes all of Europe's democracies and where the independence and sovereignty of all nations are respected.
Russia should be a part of this Europe. We will work together with NATO and NATO members to build new avenues of cooperation and consultation between Russia and NATO.
NATO members and Russia are increasingly allied against terrorism, regional instability and other threats of our age. And NATO must reflect this alliance. We are encouraged by President Putin's commitment to a political dialogue in Chechnya.
Russia has also made important strides on immigration and the protection of religious and ethnic minorities, including Russia's Jewish community. On these issues, Russia is a fundamentally different place than it was during the Soviet era. President Putin told me that these gains for freedom will be protected and expanded. Our foreign ministers have sealed this understanding in an exchange of letters.
Because of this progress, my administration will work with Congress to end the application of the Jackson-Vanik amendment to Russia. Russia has set out to strengthen free market institutions and the rule of law. On this basis, our economic relationship is developing quickly, and we will look for further ways to expand it.
A strong, independent media is a vital part of a new Russia. We have agreed to launch a dialogue on media entrepreneurship so that American and Russian media representatives can meet and make practical recommendations to both our governments in order to advance our goal of a free media and free exchange of ideas.
Russia and the United States will continue to face complex and difficult issues, yet we have made great progress in a very short period of time.
Today, because we are working together, both our countries and the world are more secure and safe.
I want to thank President Putin for the spirit of our meetings. Together, we're making history as we make progress.
Laura and I are looking forward to welcoming the Putins to our ranch in Crawford, Texas.
I can't wait to show you my state and where I live. In the meantime, I hope you have a fine stay here in Washington, D.C., and it's my honor to welcome you to the White House, sir, and welcome you to the podium.
PUTIN (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Ladies and gentlemen, I didn't know whether I would have an opportunity to address such a representative audience of the press and media.
I would like to begin anyway with a thanks to the president of the United States not only for his kind invitation to visit the United States and Washington, but also for his very informal initiation of our negotiations earlier today.
Myself and my colleagues are very pleased to be here at this historic building, the White House.
And President Bush deemed it appropriate not only to tour me - to guide me through the premises of this house where he lives. We saw almost every picture hanging on the walls of this great building. It's not only very interesting, it also changes for the better the quality of our relationship.
I would like to once again thank the president and the American people, and I would like to express our condolences in connection with the recent plane crash in the United States. As they say in Russia, tragedy does not come alone; tragedies always come in many numbers. I am confident that the American people would face this tragedy very bravely.
I would like to inform you that the Washington part of our negotiations is being completed, and our discussions proved very constructive, interesting and useful and will continue at Crawford. But the preliminary results we evaluate as extremely positive. This is our fourth meeting with President Bush in the last few months.
I believe this is a vivid demonstration of the dynamic nature of the Russian-American relations. We have come to understand each other better, and our positions are becoming closer on the key issues of bilateral and international relations. We are prepared now to seek solutions in all areas of our joint abilities. We intend to dismantle conclusively the vestiges of the Cold War and to develop a new - entirely new partnership for the long term. Of course, we discussed in detail the subject matter of the fight against terrorism.
The tragic developments of September 11 demonstrated vividly the need for a joint effort to counter this global threat. We consider this threat as a global threat, indeed, and the terrorists and those who help them should know that the justice is inescapable, and it will reach them wherever they try to hide.
Also, post-crisis political settlement in Afghanistan was discussed. The most important thing for today is to return peace and the life in order to Afghanistan, so that no threat originates from Afghanistan to the international stability. Of course, we do not intend to force upon the Afghan people the solutions. It is for them to resolve those issues with the active participation of the United Nations.
We discussed in detail our dialogue related to strategic offensive and defensive weapons. Here, we managed to achieve certain progress. First of all, it has to do with the prospects of reaching a reliable and verifiable agreement on further reductions of the U.S. and the Russians' weapons. Here, I must say, we appreciate very much the decision by the president to reduce strategic offensive weapons to the limits indicated by him, and we, for our part, will try to respond in kind.
On the issues of missile defense, the position of Russia remains unchanged, and we agreed to continue dialogue and consultations on this.
I believe that it's too early now to draw the line on the discussions of these issues. And we will have an opportunity to continue the work on this, one of the very difficult issues, at the Crawford ranch.
We also exchanged on a number of topical issues of international importance - the Balkans, Iraq - and we reiterated in a joint statement the resolve of the United States and Russia to facilitate settlement in the Middle East and the early resumption of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
We also discussed seriously the development of relations between Russia and NATO, including taking into account a change in the international situation. We consider that there are opportunities for an entirely new mechanism, joint decision making and coordinated action in the area of security and stability.
We considered in detail a number of economic cooperation issues. The Russian-American dialogue on this area has become recently more constructive and more tangible. Such major investment projects as Sakhalin I and Caspian pipeline consortium are gaining momentum. Successful cooperation in the aerospace, mining, chemistry, car building and other industries.
Direct contacts are expanding between entrepreneurs of the two countries, including within the Russian-American business dialogue. It is with satisfaction that we note a certain progress in issues related to Russia's accession to the WTO, in recognizing Russia as a market economy country. And we felt a great degree of understanding that such issues should be resolved; I mean, dealing with the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, not de facto, but in legal terms.
And in this context, our foreign minister and the secretary of state, Messrs. Ivanov and Powell, exchanged letters reiterating the resolve of Russia and the United States to observe human rights and religious freedoms.
Of course, the capabilities embedded in the bilateral relationship have not been fully implemented - indeed, we have quite a lot of things to do, but we are confident that the success is by and large predetermined by our resolve to cooperate energetically and constructively.
That, I'm confident, would benefit both countries and is reflected also in our visit to this country today.
Thank you.
Q: Mr. President, the northern alliance forces took over Kabul, and there are reports of executions of POWs and other violent reprisals. Can the alliance be trusted to form a broad-based government? If not, what should happen next to stabilize Afghanistan, and what role, if any, should U.S. troops play in that political phase?
BUSH: First of all, we're making great progress in our objective, and that is to tighten the net and eventually bring al-Qaida to justice and, at the same time, deal with the government that's been harboring them.
President Putin and I spent a lot of time talking about the northern alliance and their relationship to Kabul, as well as Mazar-e-Sharif and other cities that have now been liberated from the Taliban.
I made it very clear to him that we will continue to work with the northern alliance to make sure they recognize that in order for there to be a stable Afghanistan, which is one of our objectives, after the Taliban leaves, that the country be a good neighbor and that they must recognize that a future government must include representatives from all of Afghanistan.
We listened very carefully to the comments coming out of the northern alliance today. And they made it very clear they had no intention of occupying Kabul. That's what they said.
I have seen reports, of which you refer to, and I also saw a report that said, on their way out of town, the Taliban was wreaking havoc on the citizenry of Kabul. And if that be the case - I haven't had it verified one way or the other - but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. After all, the Taliban has been wreaking havoc on the entire country for over a decade. This has been one of the most repressive regimes in the history of mankind.
But we will continue to work with the northern alliance commanders to make sure they respect the human rights of the people that they're liberating.
And I also saw reports - and I think President Putin mentioned this today as well - that in some of the northern cities there was a great, joyous - a wonderful, joyous occasion, as the citizens were free, free from repression, free from a dictatorial government. But we're both mindful and particularly mindful of the need for us to work with our northern alliance friends to treat people with respect.
PUTIN: All our reactions were aimed at liberating the northern part of Afghanistan, the capital of Afghanistan, liberate it from the Taliban regime. And any military action is accompanied not only by the military resistance, but also an information resistance.
What we are witnessing right now exactly - we tend to forget now the destruction of the cultural heritage of humankind. We tend to forget now the atrocities by Taliban, and we are talking less than usual of the Taliban harboring international terrorism.
The information that the northern alliance are shooting the prisoners of war was launched a few days ago. The northern alliance were not in Kabul a few days ago. They were liberating northern parts of the country. And for those who do not know, I will tell, the northern part of the country is inhabited by the ethnic groups represented in the northern alliance. I mean Uzbeks and Tajiks.
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Urgent priority for nuclear terrorism
Steven Chapman
November 13, 2001
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20011113-1310867.htm
"He was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns ... Almost all had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression." -- John Hersey, "Hiroshima."
Does that passage horrify you? Me, too. But not everyone feels the same way. Osama bin Laden might read it as a lovely vision of New York or Washington after he has acquired and detonated an atomic bomb.
This scenario is not just a theoretical possibility. It is something that could actually happen in the next few years if we don't take every measure possible to prevent it.
Airline security is vital; combating bioterrorism is important; winning the war in Afghanistan is critical. But success in those areas will be cold comfort if the day comes when tens of thousands of Americans are consumed in a mushroom cloud. Preventing nuclear terrorism therefore ought to be the single highest priority of our government. Even today, it's not clear that it is.
Last week, President Bush said that al Qaeda is trying to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear arms. That merely echoes bin Laden, who says he has a "religious duty" to do so and has hinted he may have nuclear weapons already. If his goal is to slaughter and terrorize Americans, as he has said, he couldn't find a better way.
Americans have yet to fully grasp the depth and urgency of the peril we face. Maybe that's because, during the Cold War, we grew accustomed to the fact that we could all die in a nuclear war. But that danger was remote, because we had an answer: nuclear deterrence. Deterrence, unfortunately, looks useless against our new foes -- who would not leave a return address on the bomb, and who might be willing to commit suicide for their gruesome cause.
To even contemplate the risk of this sort of attack is to invite panic or despair. We can be sure there are hundreds of terrorists around the world scheming to get a doomsday device, and we know there are far too many ways they might get it.
One source is Russia, which has thousands of warheads, including some that may not be as secure as we would like. Russia also has some 500 tons of enriched uranium lying around that could be used to make bombs. A few years ago, one Russian official said dozens of small "suitcase bombs" could not be accounted for.
Russia also has thousands of pounds of fissile material, which may or may not be under ironclad control. If they could smuggle out 50 or 100 pounds of the stuff, terrorists might be able to build a bomb. Once terrorists have such a weapon, it would be almost impossible to keep them from sneaking it into the United States and setting it off.
Given all these realities, the situation may look hopeless. It isn't -- quite. The good news is that if bin Laden had the bomb, he would have used it already. Those suitcase nukes may never have escaped control. Even if terrorists were able to get one, it's very unlikely they would have the codes and other expertise to detonate it.
Nor is it a simple task to convert fissile material into a weapon. MIT nuclear physicist Theodore Postol says the project would require so much in the way of machinery, materials, technical support and funding that no terrorist group would be likely to manage it -- at least not without the active help of some government, such as Iraq. But any government that collaborated in a plan to detonate an atomic bomb on American soil would be sealing its own doom, and Saddam Hussein has shown no interest in martyrdom.
So the immediate risk is low. But a slight chance of an Earth-shattering catastrophe is too much to accept.
During World War II, we moved heaven and Earth in the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb before Adolf Hitler could -- because we knew our survival hung in the balance. Today, we have to embrace a similar commitment to averting nuclear terrorism.
The questions we need to ask ourselves and our leaders, every day, are these: Are we doing everything humanly possible to prevent a nuclear holocaust on our soil? And if we are not, and if we fail, how will we ever live with ourselves?
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Bush, Putin to Reduce Nuke Arms
New York Times
November 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Russia.html?searchpv=aponline
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nuclear weapons stockpiles are due to be slashed at summit talks President Bush is holding with Russian President Vladimir Putin, both leaders having concluded they have far too many deadly warheads in the post-Cold War era.
If any suspense remained before Putin called at the White House it was whether the cutbacks would be mandated in an agreement between the two leaders or be declared by them without a formal accord of the type Bush's advisers scorn as products of outdated bureaucratic haggling of a now-distant era.
The summit talks Tuesday in Washington and Wednesday, and Thursday at Bush's Texas ranch, are more likely to be marked by atmospherics designed to inform the world that the United States and Russia no longer are adversaries.
Bush told Russian reporters on Monday that he and Putin were on the verge of forging a relationship that ``will outlive our presidencies.''
He said he would respond to Russia's quest for stronger links to Western institutions by asking NATO, which has absorbed former Soviet republics and crept up to Russia's doorstep, to ``go beyond the current relationship'' with Moscow.
NATO is a military alliance that was formed to confront the Soviet Union. Its expansion eastward was -- and may still be -- a sore point to Russians. But unable to stop NATO's growth, any more than it can stop Bush's anti-missile shield project, Russia has been given limited access to NATO deliberations.
Meanwhile, the potential enemy of an alliance that survives and even grows stronger after the end of the Cold War has never been identified.
The president suggested in his interview with the Russian reporters that he still had differences with Putin over the U.S. missile defense program. Planned U.S. tests will violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a bedrock of arms control, so Bush will junk it if Putin does not go along with stretching the treaty's terms.
Having little choice, Putin has signaled he is ready to agree to a formula that will allow the United States to go ahead with the tests, which White House officials say are more vital than ever with the intensification of a terrorism threat.
``The ABM treaty is outdated because it will prevent the United States from researching and developing weapons systems that will really reflect the true threats of the 21st century,'' Bush told the Russian reporters in the Roosevelt Room across the hall from the Oval Office. ``The big threat for us and for the Russians is not each other, but somebody developing weapons of mass destruction.''
Bush said one thing is certain: He will announce his numerical goals for reducing U.S. nuclear stockpiles.
``I'll have a number that I will share with him, and it's going to be substantially lower than today's weaponry, and I presume he'll have a number he'll share with me. The point is, what we don't need is the endless hours of arms control discussions,'' Bush said. ``It's a new day when two new leaders step forward and say this is best for stability in the world.''
Russia, no longer able to afford a Cold War nuclear stockpile, has proposed new limits on U.S. and Russian stockpiles of not more than 2,000 long-range warheads for each country, down from a current total of about 6,000 each.
Bush advisers said the president has considered a range of 1,750 to 2,250 warheads apiece. A senior U.S. official said last week Bush's range had dipped below 2,000. Other senior officials said he proposed straddling 2,000 as a ceiling.
The United States has 10,500 nuclear weapons, Russia has 20,000, as well as more than 900 tons of weapons-grade nuclear material that the two leaders want to keep secure and out of the hands of terrorists and hostile nations.
However, the Bush administration's current budget calls for reducing the funds under the Nunn-Lugar program designed to help Russia rid itself of discarded weapons and to safeguard dangerous material.
---
Interviewer Calls bin Laden Aggressively 'Changed Man'
New York Times
November 13, 2001
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13STAN.html?searchpv=nytToday
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 12 -- "At that time, his beard was black and he was soft-spoken," Hamid Mir said, sitting on the front lawn of his house here. "This time, his beard was white and he was hard-hitting and aggressive."
The bearded man in question was Osama bin Laden, whom Mr. Mir, a 36-year-old Pakistani newspaperman, had interviewed a couple of days earlier, becoming the first journalist known to have met Mr. bin Laden since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
Blindfolded and bundled in a blanket, Mr. Mir, who had met with Mr. bin Laden before, was placed at night in the back seat of a jeep that bounded out of Kabul, the Afghan capital, and rolled on for five hours. The next morning, finally without a blindfold, he opened his eyes to find himself inside a small mud house with cheap carpets on the dirt floor and walls. The sound of antiaircraft guns filled the air, which was markedly colder than Kabul's and which suggested that Mr. Mir had been driven north, toward the front line.
Then, Mr. Mir said, Mr. bin Laden walked in. In the next two hours, as Mr. bin Laden sipped tea and munched on olives and bread, the reporter got his big scoop: Mr. bin Laden claimed to possess nuclear arms but would use them only -- and here he or his interpreter chose a strangely formal term -- as a "deterrent."
"He was a changed man," said Mr. Mir, who had spent five days with Mr. bin Laden in the past and who had obtained his cooperation on a biography in progress.
Mr. bin Laden had been relaxed during the previous visits. Now he was talking in a loud tone and gesticulating, Mr. Mir said.
His relationship with his men and with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian- born doctor who is believed to be the second in command in Al Qaeda, Mr. bin Laden's network, appeared to have changed as well.
"Before I didn't see too many people around him," Mr. Mir said. "This time, the people around him were treating him like their spiritual leader. Previously I noticed that Dr. Zawahiri was dominating, but this time Osama bin Laden was dominating.
"Previously, it was difficult for him to understand English," he added. "This time I noticed he can understand English, he can read English."
As in the previous interviews, Dr. Zawahiri was the interpreter, using English, the language he and Mr. Mir had in common. This time, while the Saudi-born Mr. bin Laden answered in Arabic, he sometimes corrected Dr. Zawahiri's English translation, Mr. Mir said.
Mr. bin Laden had also been impressed by the coverage of protests in the West against the American bombing of Afghanistan, Mr. Mir said, and appeared to believe that antiwar sentiments could be used to his advantage.
"He said, `I admit there are many good and innocent people living in the West,' " Mr. Mir said, and suggested they should oppose the American policy, as with the Vietnam War.
While Mr. bin Laden answered all of Mr. Mir's questions in the past, he was now much more cautious.
"This time, I told him my questions and he checked off those he would not answer," Mr. Mir recalled.
When Mr. Mir slipped in an unapproved question -- whether, for instance, Mr. bin Laden would ever ally himself with President Saddam Hussein of Iraq -- Mr. bin Laden simply turned off the tape recorder.
With the answers he did get, Mr. Mir was returned to Islamabad. His scoop -- and photos of him sitting next to Mr. bin Laden, separated only by a Kalashnikov -- appeared on Saturday in Dawn, the most respected English-language daily in Pakistan, and in Ausaf, an Urdu daily of which Mr. Mir is editor and which has been sympathetic to Pakistan's Islamic parties and to the Taliban.
Some hours after publication, journalists from all over the world were knocking on Mr. Mir's door. Mr. Mir may see himself as an honorable muckraker fighting for the little guy against Pakistan's corrupt politicians and military rulers, the Islamabad elite may look down on him as a Geraldo Rivera-like populist, but he is not the kind of reporter who is content to let his articles do all the talking.
A German television reporter suggested that the fact that Mr. bin Laden seemed in the interview to justify the attacks on Sept. 11 amounted to a confession that he was behind them.
"So you must appreciate my art of interview," Mr. Mir responded. "I trapped him. As a journalist it's my success that an experienced journalist like you is of the view that he has confessed. So you must give credit to me, not to the Americans."
For the record, according to Mr. Mir, Mr. bin Laden denied being involved in the attacks but said they were justified.
It was through Mr. Mir's connections with the Taliban that he was able to interview Mr. bin Laden for the first time, in March 1997. An escorted journey through the mountains of northeastern Afghanistan led him to a small artificial cave. Before he met Mr. bin Laden, he was thoroughly searched.
During the first meeting, Mr. bin Laden played the generous host, serving a roasted sheep and Pepsi. But in a clear effort to make his reach clear, he recited the journalist's bank account and identity card numbers, as well as his relatives' phone numbers.
That meeting left Mr. Mir unimpressed. But by the next year, Mr. Mir said, Mr. bin Laden had seized on the issue of forcing American forces out of Saudi Arabia, and his messages began resonating.
He wrote poems that inspired his followers, Mr. Mir said. They were typically addressed to his soldiers and concerned the Palestinians. Mr. Mir paraphrased one poem this way: "The poor children and the poor women of Palestine, they are crying, they are calling for your help -- where are you?"
Still, Mr. Mir remains skeptical. "Osama bin Laden's real strength is bad American policies," he said, adding that Mr. bin Laden was exploiting the United States' support for unpopular regimes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries.
"On one side, the Americans are the champions of democracy and human rights," Mr. Mir said. "On the other side, they are fighting against Osama bin Laden with the help of military dictators and kings who don't believe in democracy or human rights.
"Osama bin Laden is not a hero because of his ideas. He is a hero by default."
------
Can Bush and Putin Control Russia's Arsenal?
New York Times
November 13, 2001
By CHRISTOPHER J. DODD and CHUCK HAGEL
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/opinion/13DODD.html?searchpv=nytToday
WASHINGTON -- The events of Sept. 11 shattered any illusion that America is secure from foreign attack. As horrible as that day was, future attacks could be far more deadly. If terrorists had used a nuclear weapon in lower Manhattan, hundreds of thousands might have died.
President Bush has noted the potential threat we face if Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups obtain weapons of mass destruction. These groups are seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, he told European leaders last week. If they obtain them, they will be a threat "to every nation and eventually to civilization itself."
The primary sources for these materials of destruction are weapons plants and reactors in the former Soviet Union, where thousands of tons of weapons-grade uranium, plutonium, chemicals and pathogens are stored at hundreds of sites. Some of these sites lack fences, alarms or qualified security guards. Systems to account for fissile material are rudimentary or nonexistent.
Several times in the last decade, individuals or groups have attempted to steal and then sell nuclear, chemical or biological materials from sites in Russia. We know this because we have captured them. But how many incidents have happened that we don't know about? It would only take a softball-sized lump of highly enriched uranium, or a baseball-sized lump of plutonium, along with materials readily available on the commercial market, to put together a nuclear device that could fit in an S.U.V.Terrorists are also working to perfect the delivery of deadly chemical and biological agents on a broad scale.
As President Bush meets with President Vladimir Putin of Russia this week, he should discuss devising effective ways to ensure that weapons and materials of mass destruction in and around Russia remain safe, accounted for and secure.
In 1991, Congress approved legislation that provided money to Russia and other former Soviet states to help them dismantle their nuclear arsenals and create safe storage for weapons-grade nuclear material. Under the program, named for former Senator Sam Nunn and Senator Richard Lugar, more than 5,600 warheads have been deactivated since 1992. The United States has spent more than $2 billion to aid Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan in the destruction of their weapons, and has helped Russia safely dispose of thousands of tons of nuclear weapons and materials. Despite this effort, most Russian nuclear material is inadequately secured.
Meanwhile, the United States government has hired or helped place thousands of former weapons scientists from the Soviet Union to work in university labs, hospitals and power plants. Many more, however, remain out of work or underemployed. They are thus susceptible to selling their expertise to terrorist groups or rogue states.
Despite the success of these programs, we need a better plan to reduce the threat of these weapons -- one that takes into account the new realities of the world after Sept. 11.
First, we need a clear mechanism for leadership and accountability. Coordination between the dozens of federal departments, agencies and bureaus responsible for scores of nonproliferation programs must be improved. Funding for these programs must be drastically increased -- and not just by the United States. America's allies, and international organizations like the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency, should also do their part.
Russia's partnership is vital to the success of this effort. The nonproliferation of nuclear materials -- as well as chemical and biological agents -- must become a cornerstone of Russian-American relations. Preventing weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands is a goal we both share. Russian cooperation in neutralizing Iraq's program for weapons of mass destruction should be part of any new security arrangement between Washington and Moscow.
On Sept. 11, the unthinkable happened. Worse could be yet to come, especially if terrorists acquire and use nuclear weapons. The only real defense is an effective, long-term strategy that prevents the spread of dangerous chemical, biological and nuclear materials. The United States cannot do this alone. We need President Putin's help -- and he needs ours.
Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, and Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
-------- europe
Protesters Fail to Prevent Franco-German Nuclear Shipment
November 13, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2001/2001L-11-13-03.html
GORLEBEN, Germany, A shipment of nuclear waste has been returned from the French reprocessing plant at La Hague to a nuclear dump at Gorleben. The consignment is only the second permitted by the German radiation authority (BfS) since transboundary shipments were resumed in March following a three year break.
The first shipment of nuclear waste from France to Germany since 1998 ended on March 30 after a three day trip marked by large scale protests. Some 20,000 police were employed to guard the rail and road transfer of six armoured containers, which demonstrators nevertheless managed to delay by chaining themselves to railway tracks.
This time, around 5,000 anti-nuclear campaigners, farmers and residents were held at bay by police, who outnumbered them three to one and managed to prevent any delays.
Police surround anti-transport demonstrators on the railway tracks (Photo by Fred Dott courtesy Greenpeace Germany)
The only hold-up during the two-day journey was caused when the locomotive pulling the 67 metric tons of vitrified waste in six Castor containers broke down and carriages had to be hitched up to another engine.
Vitrified nuclear waste has been incorporated into a stable, environmentally safe glass that can be placed in a long term geologic repository.
The German government maintains that Gorleben is a safe repository for reprocessed nuclear waste, but Greenpeace campaigners called the German power industry's nuclear waste disposal policy "scandalous and reckless."
The radioactive waste was being transported 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) across Europe only to be left in "a potato store for an indeterminate period," Greenpeace said.
{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}
-------- france
PARIS - Controversial nuclear convoy sets off for Germany
Reuters,
13/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=13268
A controversial convoy of nuclear waste was expected to unleash demonstrations along its route to Germany set off from France on the weekend, Greenpeace said.
The shipment by rail of six containers of German waste left Valongnes station close to the reprocessing plant at La Hague, on France's northwestern coast, at 1830 GMT on Sunday, the environmental group told Reuters.
"This transport...represents a scandalous risk for the populations along the route," said Frederic Marillier, responsible for nuclear issues at Greenpeace.
The shipment has already attracted demonstrators to Gorleben, northern Germany, where it is eventually to be stored, and Greenpeace said more demonstrations were expected in the suburbs of the French border city of Strasbourg.
The convoy comprises two diesel engines followed by two wagons of security officers, the six nuclear waste containers, a police wagon and another engine, Greenpeace said.
German police, who have mobilised 15,000 officers to protect the shipment, said aircraft would be banned from flying low over the route to free airspace for their own helicopters.
"It has nothing to do in this case with terrorist attacks," a police spokeswoman said, when asked if the move was a response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, which led to security at German nuclear sites being increased.
PROTESTERS BLOCK ROADS
In Germany, farmers accompanied by some 2,000 protesters used more than 200 tractors on Sunday to block roads around Dannenberg, where the containers are due on Tuesday or Wednesday to be transferred to lorries for the final 20 km (12 miles) of their journey.
"We want to show that we are not prepared to take this sitting down, but we know that once again we will not be able to stop the containers," said farmers spokesman Hans-Werner Zachow.
On Saturday some 5,000 people in Lueneburg and another 800 in Karlsruhe marched in protest at the plans, while about 20 Greenpeace activists spent the night of Saturday to Sunday at Valognes railway station.
Security forces had to dislodge two protesters who had climbed onto the railway signals, Greenpeace said, while police said they had found a large concrete slab on the tracks, similar to ones used by demonstrators in past protests to delay trains.
Police used heat-seeking cameras on Saturday night to check along the rail route for protesters, a Reuters photographer reported. Two weeks ago a fire in trailers under an iron bridge which lies along the route caused damage worth an estimated one million marks ($455,000).
Nuclear power remains a controversial issue in Germany, despite legislation adopted last month to phase out its use over the next two decades. The shipment will be only the second of its type this year from France. The last was in May.
-------- germany
Germany prepares for demos on nuclear convoy route
Reuters,
13/11/2001
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/13269/story.htm
BERLIN - Germany braced on the weekend for four days of demonstrations as it prepared to receive a controversial nuclear waste shipment from France.
Police, who have mobilised 15,000 officers to protect the shipment, said aircraft would be banned from flying low over the route to free airspace for their own helicopters.
"It has nothing to do in this case with terrorist attacks," a police spokeswoman said, when asked if the move was a response to the September 11 attacks in the United States, which led to security at German nuclear sites being increased.
The shipment by rail of six containers of German waste is not due to leave a reprocessing plant at La Hague, France, until late on Sunday but has already attracted demonstrators to Gorleben, northern Germany, where it is eventually to be stored.
Farmers used around 30 tractors on Sunday to block a road near Dannenberg, where the containers are due on Tuesday or Wednesday to be transferred to lorries for the final 20 km (12 miles) of their journey.
On Saturday some 5,000 people in Lueneburg and another 800 in Karlsruhe marched in protest at the plans, while Greenpeace activists moved to the Valognes railway station near Cherbourg, France, to await arrival of the containers from La Hague.
Two weeks ago a fire in trailers under an iron bridge which lies along the route caused damage worth an estimated one million marks ($455,000).
Police used heat-seeking cameras on Saturday night to check along the rail route for protesters, a Reuters photographer reported.
Nuclear power remains a controversial issue in Germany, despite legislation adopted last month to phase out its use over the next two decades. The shipment will be only the second of its type this year from France. The last was in May.
-------- india / pakistan
Banish the bomb
News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/oped/o3.htm
The writer is a former broadcaster, commentator, foreign correspondent and a freelance columnist
Two recent statements about Pakistan's nuclear capability or capacity do not bear scrutiny. The first one was made by General Musharraf during a press interview. He stated that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal was in safe hands and that it was the cornerstone of the country's defence. The second was by a government spokesman (no doubt emanating from the first source) that Pakistan's nuclear armaments were so secretly stowed that nobody knew where they were and nobody could ever know.
For these statements to be flowing out with such rapidity, there must be a good reason. That reason became obvious when a few days ago President Bush issued a warning that terrorists were likely to get hold of either nuclear devices or obtain the means to make their own nuclear bomb. A suggestion was made that terrorists would or could steal nuclear material. Both General Musharraf and the government spokesman were in fact reassuring President Bush that this country was out of bounds to nuclear thieves.
Now, I shall take up the General's declaration. He as a soldier should know better than the mullahs who day in and day out mouth the same tune that the nuclear bomb is the best defence we have. The general should know that it is the worst possible defence, for defence it is not. The possession of the bomb is the worst possible threat of offence. For a small country to possess one is to do itself the worst possible disservice. First of all it must be reiterated what a nuclear bomb is. In spite of the fact that our generals think that it is an extremely loud bang, they along with the mullahs do nor know that three or four strategically placed bombs on Pakistan will put paid to the country. It will be annihilated. Everything will cease to function.
If Mangla and Tarbela dams are breeched billions of gallons of radioactive water will sweep down the country. Thereafter there will be nothing to eat for those who may have survived extinction. They would have hardly any water to drink. In fact they would wish that they had died with the first blast. And if our valiant soldiers think that they will be sitting pretty in their bunkers, safe and alive, then they had better start studying the after effects of a bomb explosion. They too would wish that they were dead if they survived at all.
All this will happen or can happen, by over touting the bomb. The attacker who could be the one with enormous depth which this country does not have, in order to avoid being hit by a nuke would pre-emptively lodge the first two or three strategic bombs. That would make it impossible for Pakistan to retaliate. If on the other hand Pakistan did not have the blessed bomb, then the opponent may not want to use his bomb. There would appear to be no need. The best defence for Pakistan is to renounce the bomb altogether, as indeed it is for the whole world. I shall revert to this later.
For the second spokesman of the government to declare that nobody knows where Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is stored or located is poppycock. It is an axiom that for a secret to be maintained, only one person must be in possession of it. The moment a second person knows the chances of a leak increase. With a secret like the nuclear arsenals, hundreds of persons are in the know. Those whose business it is to find out will find out. After all when the first nuclear bomb was being developed in the 1940s, it was the topmost secret of the world. It was code named Project Manhattan. Despite all efforts to maintain this secret, the Germans knew and they were racing to come out with a bomb before the Americans could. The Germans lost the race and consequently the war.
Now when President Bush says that terrorists can steal the bomb or the enriched uranium or plutonium to make it, he may not have been hinting at Pakistan but the latter felt bound to assert that Pakistan's nukes were safe. The greatest source for obtaining either the bomb or the material to make it is either Russia or the US itself. They between themselves have 98% the material or bombs. It is no longer unthinkable that somebody should smuggle a nuke into New York and blow it up. After the demolition of the twin towers of the WTO, NY, nothing is too outlandish and unthinkable. A bomb can be smuggled into New York in a container. Thousands of containers are landed in that city. It is impossible for anyone to check the contents of every container before despatch or after receipt.
The remedy therefore is for all nuke possessing nations to dispose of their bombs and their bomb making material. For this purpose both Russia and the US are well suited to lead and work toward arriving at a treaty or protocol to ban the nuke. After all after World War I, poison gas was banned by a Geneva Convention. To this day that agreement has held. And poison gas was not half as horrific as a nuke.
Tony Blair, the super salesman who is going around frantically trying to sell refrigerators to Eskimos, as it were, could employ his considerable talent in the pursuit of the abolition of the bomb. After all, in the weeks since Sept 11, Mr Blair has paid visits to Berlin, Paris, New York, Washington, Brussels, Moscow, Islamabad, Delhi, Riyadh, Amman and Tel Aviv. And now he is off to Washington on the Concorde. Never in the days of yore did a British Prime Minister ever leave his proverbial imperial throne, except at the time of Munich in 1939 when Mr Chamberlain went to meet Hitler. Now the monarch sits in Washington. Once the bomb is banned altogether and disposed off by everyone, that will be the time to breathe easily and relax.
------
U.S. Says Aid to Pakistan Won't Include F-16 Fighters
New York Times
November 13, 2001
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13JETS.html?searchpv=nytToday
WASHINGTON, Nov. 12 -- The Bush administration has rejected Pakistan's request to release a fleet of F-16 jet fighters that it bought in the 1980's, American officials said today, adding that the United States wanted to avoid destabilizing relations in South Asia.
In an interview with The New York Times published on Saturday, the president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said transferring the fighters would be an important symbolic gesture of American gratitude for his nation's strong support in the war in Afghanistan.
Pakistan purchased 28 F-16's in the 1980's, but their delivery was blocked when Congress cut off all aid and military sales in 1990, citing Pakistan's secret development of nuclear weapons.
President Bush announced on Saturday that the United States was providing an aid package worth more than $1 billion to Pakistan in exchange for its war support, but the F-16's were conspicuously absent from the deal.
Mr. Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell discussed the matter with General Musharraf in meetings in New York but decided against making the fighters a part of renewed ties with Pakistan.
"They would like to have the planes," Secretary Powell said in an interview today, "but at the moment we are restarting our military-to- military relationship in a more serious way, and the planes are not an issue that we expect to be discussing in the very near future."
The Clinton administration settled the longstanding dispute over the planes by sending Pakistan cash and commodities worth more than $500 million, officials said today.
Despite the settlement, General Musharraf said Pakistan still wanted the planes, advanced fighter- bombers, as a visible sign that the United States was restoring Pakistan to the status of a genuine ally.
"I did take up this case, frankly, not because that much of it was significant from defense point of view," General Musharraf said on Sunday. "It has its significance, certainly, but not as much as I should have highlighted it. It's more for public perceptions in Pakistan."
Having his public request turned down flat was an embarrassing setback that he said would be "received negatively" in Pakistan.
Administration officials did not rule out releasing the fighters in the future, holding back an important carrot in Washington's evolving relationship with the general.
"We're at the very beginnings of resuming military-to-military contacts with Pakistan," an administration official said, "and right now we're looking at more modest requests, like providing spare parts and assisting their border security with helicopters."
Indeed, much of the calculus appeared to hinge on the United States balancing its diplomatic and military relations with Pakistan and India, Pakistan's neighbor and longtime rival. Both countries are nuclear powers.
Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the United States has tried to patch up its relations with General Musharraf, who took power in a coup two years ago. Pakistan, the most prominent Islamic ally in the war in Afghanistan, has allowed American search-and-rescue aircraft and Special Operations forces to operate from several of its bases.
At the same time, the United States has improved its relations with India, and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld praised the improved ties on a recent visit there.
Transferring the F-16's now could upset that delicate balance, especially because the fighters are a combat aircraft that is capable of dropping nuclear weapons. "Any transfer of advanced weapons would get everyone all riled up," a State Department official said.
Lee Feinstein, a State Department official in the Clinton administration who worked on South Asia policy, said: "The United States has a new role in South Asia, and that is as a kind of guarantor of stability for Pakistan. At the same time, it wants to deepen relationship with India. The trick will be whether officials in all three capitals can can accommodate this."
There are other constraints to releasing the fighters, officials said.
In September, Mr. Bush lifted economic sanctions against Pakistan and India that were imposed after both countries conducted nuclear tests in 1998. But Pakistan's Defense Ministry remains under American sanctions for buying M-11 missiles from China in the early 1990's.
Mr. Bush waived some of those missile-related sanctions in September to allow Pakistan's military to help in the war in Afghanistan, but the full restrictions do not expire until November of next year, a State Department official said.
-------- japan
Japan, US to Review Japan War Plan
NOVEMBER 13, 20:45 EST
AP
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=WORLD&PACKAGEID=japan
TOKYO - Japanese and U.S. defense officials were slated to meet Wednesday in Tokyo to review plans for Japan's military commitment to the war against terrorism under a new law permitting non-combat assistance.
Japan is reportedly set to contribute about 1,500 sailors, airmen and other military personnel, who will be restricted to operations outside of the war zone. They will carry supplies by sea and air and participate in search-in-rescue missions, domestic news media said Wednesday.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet is expected to endorse the plan on Friday. Last week his administration approved the dispatch of three Japanese warships to the Indian Ocean to scout sea lanes and gather other information for military officials planning the operation.
A second naval contingent consisting of an additional three or four vessels could leave as early as next week, the media reports said.
Ordering its military to provide support for forces engaged in combat is a first for Japan since the end of World War II. During the Gulf War ten years ago, Tokyo sent minesweepers to the Gulf after the fighting was over.
Tight constraints are placed on Japan's military by its nation's pacifist constitution, which rejects the use of force to resolve international disputes and reflects its bitter experience during World War II.
----
Accident Shuts Down Japan Plant
Associated Press
November 13, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Japan-Neutrino-Accident.html
TOKYO (AP) -- A massive underground facility where researchers proved that subatomic particles spawned by the sun and stars have mass was damaged in an accident and shut down, officials said Tuesday.
The Super-Kamiokande, the world's largest neutrino detector, is built in an abandoned copper mine about 170 miles west of Tokyo.
Workers had just completed repairs to some damaged light detectors on Monday when the ground shook and they heard explosions, said project spokesman Yoji Totsuka, a Tokyo University professor.
The facility is a huge cylinder, 129 feet in diameter and 135 feet high, containing 12.5 million gallons of water. The tank is lined with more than 11,000 photomultipler tubes that detect the specific wavelength of light produced when neutrinos react with water.
As the chamber was being refilled with water, explosions shook the facility, destroyed a large number of the light-detecting tubes, Totsuka said. Initial estimates were that up to half of the tubes were destroyed.
``This is a serious accident,'' said Totsuka. ``The facility is not serviceable at all.''
A research team is looking into what caused the accident, but their investigation was expected to take some time, Totsuka said. A water pressure failure was one possibility.
Totsuka could not say how soon the facility would be repaired.
``We're determined to rebuild the detectors,'' he said.
Researchers at the facility, which is run by Tokyo University, discovered in 1998 that neutrinos have mass. Earlier this year, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada announced additional research that supports the findings at Super-K.
It is estimated that 400 billion neutrinos pass through the Earth every second without striking a thing. Physicists believe the particles play a key role in how matter reacts and the universe works.
-------- missile defense
Missile Shield Program Still Costly
By Tom Raum
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 4:41 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23069-2001Nov13?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The fate of President Bush's missile defense plan may depend more on money and science than on any deal with Russia.
As Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin head for Bush's ranch in central Texas to continue their summit talks, the proposed U.S. missile shield remains their biggest source of dispute.
Even if they can reach an agreement, money and science shortcomings threaten to keep the program stalled for years.
The technology to fulfill former President Reagan's 1980s vision of being able to blast enemy missiles out of the sky - often likened to hitting bullets with other bullets - remains unsure.
Congress, caught between a distressed economy and multibillion-dollar demands for the war on terrorism, is showing second thoughts about forking over what its analysts say could amount to $60 billion over the next 15 years.
Just last week, in fact, a House Appropriations subcommittee recommended the cancellation of an expensive infrared satellite radar system that the Pentagon considers an integral part of the missile defense plan.
Even within the Bush administration, divisions persist between hard-liners who want to ditch the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty - which prohibits national missile defenses - and moderates who would like it rewritten or replaced with a new arms-control pact.
Bush wants the pact scrapped. Putin contends it is a cornerstone of strategic stability and should remain in place.
"The position of Russia remains unchanged," Putin said Tuesday at a news conference with Bush at the White House.
Still, Putin signaled flexibility, saying he and Bush would "continue dialogue and consultations" on the subject at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas.
The Bush administration wants to move to the next phase of building a limited national missile defense: construction next spring at Fort Greely, Alaska - near Fairbanks - of five silos for interceptor missiles and a command-and-control testing center.
U.S. officials believe that Putin is ready to agree to allow testing and construction of the Alaska site to proceed, but would oppose any move toward deployment.
The ABM treaty does permit some testing on missile defense systems.
The worst terrorist attack on American soil came not from a warhead on a missile - but from hijacked passenger airliners.
Missile-defense critics say that reinforces their position that money spent on missile defense is wasted. But defenders argued that the Sept. 11 attacks emphasized the vulnerability of the U.S. homeland, regardless of the source of the attack.
Kurt Campbell, of the private Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it's too early to say whether the terror attacks will build - or lessen - support for missile defense.
"More likely are significant budget problems. We don't have the money to do everything right now," he said.
Critics suggest missile-defense construction will fuel a new arms race while providing dubious protection for Americans. They claim the Fort Greely project is mainly designed to fulfill a Bush campaign pledge to deploy a rudimentary system before the end of his first term.
"The science has not been shown to be feasible," said Stephen Young of the Union of Concerned Scientists. In fact, Young suggested that the program's well-documented problems may have helped persuade Putin that a missile-defense system is not a near-term threat to Russia.
The Pentagon has had mixed results so far on four interceptor tests over the Pacific, with two failures and two successes since 1999. The most recent success came in July. A fifth test that had been scheduled for October was postponed because of mechanical difficulties.
The administration is weighing various options, all scaled-back versions of Reagan's original concept of a space-based missile shield, derided by Democrats as "Star Wars."
Since Reagan's proposals for a Strategic Defense Initiative, the Pentagon has spent about $80 billion on various missile-defense programs.
But even proponents agree deployment of an effective system remains years away, perhaps 2007 at the earliest.
Despite the costs and the obstacles, missile-defense backer Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, says the consequences of not building such a system could be huge.
"We saw two buildings taken down. Imagine if that had been all of Manhattan," Weldon said. "If one missile, either deliberately or accidentally, hits one of our major cities, in that context, the cost is not an issue. It's a defense we do not now have."
EDITOR'S NOTE - Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.
-------- russia
Russian Official Reveals Attempt Made to Steal Nuclear Materials
Report Coincides With Bin Laden's Claim to Have Weapons
By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18679-2001Nov12?language=printer
A senior Russian official has reported a major incident involving the attempted theft of nuclear materials in the past two years, raising fresh fears about the security of the former superpower's aging nuclear arsenal.
The incident, revealed in a report by the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, coincides with claims by Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden that he has acquired weapons of mass destruction and would be willing to use them as a last resort. While U.S. officials are skeptical that bin Laden has acquired a real nuclear weapon, they believe he might have acquired radiological materials that could be scattered into the atmosphere with the help of a conventional bomb.
A White House official said he had no information to support claims in the Pakistani media that bin Laden had met with retired Pakistani nuclear scientists who have shown sympathy for his fundamentalist Islamic views. Earlier, a well-placed Pakistani official told The Washington Post that one of the architects of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, had acknowledged holding meetings on humanitarian matters with bin Laden associates in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar.
The report of a serious attempt to compromise Russian nuclear security surfaced at a conference this month in Vienna hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency that was convened to discuss the possibility of terrorist attacks on nuclear facilities. Western experts at the conference were taken aback when Yuri Volodin, head of the safety department at the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, reported a previously undisclosed security violation of the "highest possible consequence" sometime during the past two years.
Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University nuclear expert who worked at the Clinton White House, said Volodin refused to provide further details about the nature of the violation. Bunn said he assumed that the materials had been recovered, as otherwise the Russians would probably not have drawn attention to the incident in a public forum. Volodin could not be contacted for immediate comment.
There have been dozens of attempts by smugglers and terrorists to gain access to Russia's vast nuclear arsenal in the 10 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but no leakage of sufficient quantities of highly fissile materials to build a nuclear weapon has been confirmed. Thefts of low-grade radiological material have been more frequent.
While U.S. officials say there is no doubt that bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network has attempted to acquire nuclear and biological weapons, there is considerable debate over whether he has been successful. That is why considerable attention has been focused on the activities of Mahmood and other Pakistani nuclear scientists who have been questioned repeatedly by the Pakistani police over the past two weeks.
According to Pakistani officials, Mahmood and his associate, Abdul Majid, told police that they went to Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, as part of their work for the Islamic relief organization Ummah Tamer-e-Nau. They said they helped construct a flour mill near the city, and denied passing on nuclear information or materials to anyone in Afghanistan.
Mahmood's area of expertise is the production of plutonium, the highly fissile material used in some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. He was transferred to a desk job in the spring of 1999 after publicly advocating increases in the production of plutonium to help other Islamic nations build nuclear weapons. He has also spoken out strongly in support of the radical Taliban movement, which he has described as a "movement of Islamic renaissance."
Some Western experts suspect that the Kandahar flour mill could be a cover for some kind of biological or chemical weapons program, which could involve milling bacteriological agents to fine powders. It is more difficult to imagine it being used as a screen for a nuclear program.
Correspondent Molly Moore in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
----
A Summit Topic: Russia's Plutonium
New York Times
November 13, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/opinion/L13MISS.html?searchpv=nytToday
To the Editor:
Re "An Easy Bargain With Russia" (Op-Ed, Nov. 10):
Burton Richter proposes that President Bush agree to the demand by President Vladimir V. Putin for lower strategic bomb inventories. But the proposal doesn't address what becomes of the thousands of nuclear warheads retired by each side.
The United States-Russian agreement to turn plutonium "pits" of these warheads into fuel for nuclear power plants is wrongheaded when operatives of Al Qaeda are looking for atom bomb materials.
Lax nuclear security in Russia would be aggravated by transporting tons of weapons-grade plutonium thousands of miles from pit-conversion plant to fuel-fabrication plant to nuclear power plants.
Presidents Bush and Putin should instead agree to abandon Russia's insistence on using plutonium as fuel in return for American financial incentives to dispose of it directly as waste.
PAUL L. LEVENTHAL Pres., Nuclear Control Institute Washington, Nov. 10, 2001
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Bush Promises Warheads Reduction
By Ron Fournier
AP White House Correspondent
Tuesday, November 13, 2001; 6:04 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23601-2001Nov13?language=printer
WASHINGON -- President Bush pledged Tuesday to slash the United States' nuclear arsenal by two-thirds, to as few as 1,700 warheads, and Russian President Vladimir Putin said he might "respond in kind." The leaders failed to agree on Bush's missile shield plans.
In private talks and then in an East Room news conference, the leaders opened a three-day visit that will focus on the budding U.S.-Russian alliance against terrorism and nagging differences over the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"The position of Russia remains unchanged," Putin said of his government's objection to scrapping the treaty that bars national missile defenses.
The talks move Wednesday to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where U.S. officials held out hopes for accord on the missile shield issue. Both leaders indicated their relationship had buried vestiges of the Cold War.
"Together, we're making history as we make progress," Bush said. "We're transforming our relationship from one of hostility and suspicion to one based on cooperation and trust."
In his fourth meeting with the U.S. president, Putin urged his own citizens to stop looking at American relations "from the old standpoint, distrust and the enmity." On the question of allowing U.S. forces to use Central Asia as a base into Afghanistan, the Russian president said: "We have nothing to be afraid of."
Finding plenty of common ground, the leaders urged Afghanistan's U.S.-backed opposition fighters to use restraint while liberating the nation's capital of Kabul, and called for a broad-based, mutiethnic post-Taliban government. They brushed aside reports northern alliance forces were executing prisoners of war.
In a blizzard of paper, the pair formalized a series of agreements to combat bioterrorism, bolster the Russian economy, battle money laundering that finances terrorism and strengthen Russia's ties to NATO - the 19-member military alliance formed to counter Moscow in the Cold War.
It was the issue of weapons that underscored their greatest agreement and disagreement.
Bush, who promised in the presidential campaign to significantly reduce U.S. nuclear stockpiles regardless of whether Russia reciprocated, announced his intention to slash the nation's long-range nuclear arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 weapons over the next decade.
The United States currently has about 7,000 nuclear warheads. Russia has about 5,800, but can't afford to keep them.
Bush called his proposal "fully consistent with American security."
Putin replied: "We appreciate very much the decision by the president to reduce strategic offensive weapons to the limits indicated by him and we, for our part, will try to respond in kind."
U.S. officials said they were not disappointed that Putin failed to produce a specific level for Russian cuts. They noted that Putin has pushed to reduce both nations' stockpiles to 1,500.
There were small signs of discord
Putin said he wanted the nuclear targets in writing, "including the issues of verification and control." The U.S. president said it was enough that he had "looked the man in the eye and shook his hand." But Bush said he would be willing put the agreement in writing.
On the ABM treaty, Bush hopes to persuade Putin to allow the United States to proceed with research and development of a missile shield without declaring the work a violation of the 1972 pact. In exchange, Bush promised Putin in their meeting to keep Russia informed of the tests.
U.S. officials said the proposal would give both men what they want: Bush could begin developing a missile shield and Putin could tell his public that he kept the ABM intact. Putin said he was open to discussing the issue with Bush in Crawford.
"I believe that it's too early to draw the line on the discussions," said Putin, who had a full schedule in Washington and Houston before joining Bush at the ranch late Wednesday. He was leaving Crawford on Thursday afternoon.
Bush told Putin last month in China that he was prepared to announce as early as January that the United States was pulling out of the ABM. The warning was designed to force Putin into a decision. The pledge Tuesday to unilaterally reduce U.S. nuclear arms is viewed as an incentive for Putin to compromise on the ABM.
Bush is being pressured by fellow Republicans to scrap the treaty. "The United States cannot deploy missile defenses unless and until it fully extricates itself" from the ABM, said a letter to Bush from GOP Senate leaders.
Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested there will not be an agreement on the ABM anytime soon. "You got the public statement that you're going to have to live with for a while," he said as Bush prepared to leave for his trip to Texas.
Several U.S. officials said an ABM agreement in Crawford was possible, though not likely.
In deference to Putin's assistance in the war against terrorism, the administration recently announced a delay in some missile defense tests, saying it wanted to avoid bumping up against the treaty's prohibitions.
----
Nuclear Arms History Numbers
Tue, Nov 13
By The Associated Press
http://news.excite.com/printstory/news/ap/011113/19/nuke-history-numbers
The number of strategic, or intercontinental, nuclear arms held by the United States and Russia:
Present, as of July 31, 2001
-U.S.: 7,013, supposed to be 6,000 by year's end.
-Russia: 5,858.
Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) III
-1997: Plans discussed by President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
-Status: Unsigned.
-Limit on warheads: 2,000-2,500 by the end of 2007.
START II
-1993: President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin sign START II.
-Status: Ratified by both countries.
-Limit on warheads: 3,000-3,500.
START I
-1991: President George H.W. Bush and Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev sign START I.
-Status: Ratified by both countries.
-Limit on warheads: 6,000.
September 1990
-U.S.: 10,563
-Russia: 10,271
Sources: Arms Control Association, Council for a Livable World Education Fund, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
-------- MILITARY
Between the two extremes
News International, Pakistan
Tuesday November 13, 2001-- Sha'baan 26,1422 A.H
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/nov2001-daily/13-11-2001/oped/o4.htm
The writer is Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of Karachi moonisahmar@hotmail.com
Engulfed between the devil and the deep blue sea, the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan are facing a critical situation since September 11 this year. The US led war against terrorism launched by conducting unabated bombing over Afghanistan and the hard position taken by the Taliban regime on responding to the American demand of handing over Osama Bin Laden and destroying the Al-Qaeda network prove how rigid and intransigent the two parties have become in dealing with a crisis which could have been managed through negotiations and diplomacy.
History will not forgive those individuals and states who in order to protect their vested interests sacrificed the lives of innocent people of Afghanistan and the United States. Along with the people of Afghanistan, the people of Pakistan have also become a victim of the politics of expediency and opportunism. Between the two extremes one doesn't see any hope for sanity because imprudence has prevailed over rationality. Is there a way out to halt President Bush's first war of 21st century? Why the American administration and the Taliban regime didn't utilise the option of seeking a peaceful solution to the problem and how their extreme positions have played havoc to the innocent people of Afghanistan? How the politics of extremism pursued by the two sides could be replaced with moderation and sanity?
So far, American air strikes, have failed to capture Osama Bin Laden, dismantle his Al-Qaeda network and dislodge the Taliban regime from power. Similarly, the Taliban and their Arab supporters inside Afghanistan have acted in an unreasonable manner causing unprecedented hardship to the people of that country. Extremist positions taken by the United States and the Taliban are because of two main reasons. First, the feeling in both the parties that they can win. Americans have a superiority complex that their qualitative and quantitative edge over Taliban will sooner or later result into their victory and dislodge extremist Muslims from power in Kabul. Whereas, the Taliban, along with Osama Bin Laden and other Muslim fighters in Afghanistan have a conviction that they possess the power of faith and can win in an asymmetrical war with America. For Taliban or Osama Bin Laden, the US edge over technology and resources cannot defeat them because they are fighting for a religious cause. Therefore, when both parties feel that they can win the outcome is bound to be more devastation. Similar situation had occurred during the Gulf War when both Iraq and the US-led coalition believed that they can win and the result was the outbreak of hostilities, the liberation of Kuwait and the defeat of Iraq. Second, egocentric approach followed by the Taliban and the United States also resulted into rejection of negotiations and the hardening of extremism from both sides. Neither President Bush nor the Taliban leader Mullah Omar was ready to follow a moderate approach because both believed that their pride was at stake. In case of Washington, its pride had suffered massively because of September 11 events but America, despite the loss of its pride wanted to show to the world that it can go to any extent for demonstrating and reasserting its power. Whereas, for Taliban, it was the question of their survival because accepting the American conditions would have given a deathblow to the order, which they had established in the last six years.
Predictably, the outcome of the extremist positions taken by the United States and the Taliban led to the outbreak of first war of 21st century with far reaching implications, particularly in Pakistan. The question for Taliban is now not to engage the United States in a combat type war because they don't have the means to utilise that option. But for Washington, its stakes are such that it cannot yield or compromise. It has gone to an extent that its withdrawal from the war will cause tremendous embarrassment. Taliban, have nothing to lose but they are firm to defend their position till the end. Hence the outcome is standoff in the Afghan war because neither party is willing to follow a rational approach.
Before the US-Taliban war further destabilises Central, West and South Asia in particular and the world in general, it is time the politics of extremism followed by America and the Taliban regime is replaced with moderation and sanity. Since it is a war between the two unequal rivals, the side, which is more, educated and resourceful needs to take the initiative and resolve the issue. What can one expect from the Taliban and their political ideologue Osama Bin Laden in view of their orthodox and irrational behaviour on matters, which are of a critical nature. They lack wisdom and are living in a world, which is far from the reality. But, the United States, which is the most educated, advanced and sophisticated country of the world should not follow an approach which lacks prudence and magnanimity. What is required in a given situation is rethinking in the West, particularly in the United States regarding their policies, which they are pursuing to win a war against terrorism.
Three important steps may be taken by the international community to formulate a rational and proactive approach on dealing with the issue of Osama Bin Laden, his Al-Qaeda network and the regime of Taliban. First, the UN Security Council needs to intervene by deploying a massive peacekeeping force so as to create conditions for a broad-based government in Kabul. So far, Security Council is inactive in dealing with the Afghan crisis and the deployment of peace-keeping troops, along with a package including disarming armed groups, rebuilding the infrastructure of the country, encouraging the return of Afghan Diaspora, involving weaker sections of Afghan society in the process of peace and the formation of an interim government which should ensure protection of rights of all groups of Afghan society, including women and minorities. Second, in order to make sure that terrorist groups don't use Afghanistan as a safe heaven for their notorious activities, the UN Security Council with the cooperation of various regional organisations like ECO, OSCE and EU should establish institutions in that country aiming to prevent extremist or terrorist elements from gaining any influence. Third, the Security Council needs to make sure that the people of Afghanistan who have suffered as a result of 23 years of instability, wars and violence get a break and are allowed to live a peaceful live. For that purpose, all outside interference in the affairs of Afghanistan needs to be seriously prevented by the Security Council with the support and cooperation of neighbours of that country. Most importantly, the UN should launch different programs for the social, educational, and economic uplift of Afghan people so that an environment of hope for a better future could be created. Hopefully, if normalcy returns to Afghanistan and the majority of people of that country are given an access to modern education, health, employment and other necessities of life, extremist and terrorist elements will cease to exist in that country because they only thrive when people are uneducated and receptive to their calls.
Extremist policies either pursued by Washington or the Taliban regime will only result into further bloodshed and violence. It will be like a war without winners because even if the United States succeeds in dislodging Taliban from power, the threat of terrorism will not cease to exist. The cycle of the Afghan tragedy has much to do with the neglect expressed by those powers who had armed and trained the Mujahideen groups against the Soviet forces but left the Afghan people in lurch after Moscow's military withdrawal from Afghanistan in February 1989. The crisis in Afghanistan no doubt gives an opportunity to address issues, which contributed to the making of Afghan tragedy. Otherwise, the alternate scenario is an endless process of violence and destruction and the international community will again be responsible for that situation.
-------- afghanistan
Caught in lethal crossfire
Gazette's war reporter tells how he survived Taliban ambush
Montreal Gazette
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
http://www.canada.com/montreal/story.asp?id={94F48700-AFD2-4E54-AFB4-2C05AB74D119}
"If you cover (a war) from the trenches, you have to keep in your mind that things might happen to you. If you're not prepared to face those risks, you don't cover war."
Gazette reporter Levon Sevunts uttered those words late yesterday through a satellite link on the far side of the world after riding for four hours with the body of a French journalist killed in the crossfire of a fight between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance in northeastern Afghanistan.
On Sunday, Sevunts and a group of foreign journalists clambered aboard an armoured personnel carrier to tour Taliban trenches reportedly cleared by the latest round of fighting. But when they got there, they were greeted by a barrage of fire from Taliban gunners waiting for them in the dark.
As the APC veered around wildly, Sevunts, 32 years old and a veteran of what was then the Soviet army, felt his military training take hold and, unlike the colleagues who either jumped off or fell from the moving vehicle, held on for dear life, preferring to keep a layer of armour between himself and the gunfire and land mines that might be buried in the unfamiliar ground below.
Hours later, Sevunts learned three of his colleagues had been found dead in Taliban trenches, at least two of them stripped of their belongings. The dead were Johanne Sutton, 34, and Pierre Billaud, 31, French radio correspondents, and Volker Handloik, 40, a writer for the German magazine Stern.
What appears here is Sevunts's account of the day that for him transformed the war from something to be observed into something to be survived.
------
Northern Alliance enters Kabul as Taliban flee
James Meek on the Shomali Plain, Luke Harding in Islamabad and Ewen MacAskill
Tuesday November 13, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,592617,00.html
The Northern Alliance began entering Kabul at dawn this morning after the Taliban's forces appeared to abandon the city overnight. Trucks loaded with heavily armed alliance soldiers were seen moving unop posed into the city. Little gunfire was reported.
The Northern Alliance said the soldiers were in fact advance units of its police force. However, one jubilant fighter was heard to cry out: "We have taken Kabul."
"We have taken key government buildings," another fighter said. "We are chasing the Taliban to the west."
From the rooftop of the Intercontinental Hotel on a hill overlooking the city, columns of Taliban vehicles could be seen heading south early today.
The movements appeared to confirm that the Taliban were moving all their forces back for a final defence of their stronghold in Kandahar.
There was sporadic small arms fire from hills overlooking the city but the streets were empty of the Taliban sol diers who had been there hours earlier.
Before the final push Northern Alliance spokesman Bismillah Khan said: "We are at the gate of Kabul." The US had pressed for the alliance to stay out of Kabul to allow time for a coalition government including members of the southern-based Pashtun tribe to be formed.
While some Taliban fled be fore the city was abandoned, others had mounted a rearguard action and engaged the alliance in heavy fighting on the Shomali plain about 25 miles north of the capital.
Taliban soldiers and their allies - Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and others - were rushed up to block the alliance's advance along the New Road into Kabul. The Taliban ringed the city with tanks.
In four days, the Northern Alliance has expanded its share of territory from 10% of Afghanistan to more than 40%. The country is now effectively partitioned, with the alliance in control of the north and the Taliban dug in in the south.
The alliance troops encountered little resistance as they emerged from their positions at Bagram, north of Kabul, and marched across no man's land.
Observers said US and British soldiers advanced with Afghan opposition fighters and called in air strikes against Taliban positions. Alliance soldiers at Bagram airport had eased past the Taliban's first trenches by yesterday afternoon. By last night they stopped their offensive, possibly because of the scale of the Taliban rearguard action.
The alliance claimed the halt was for political reasons. Its foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, said opposition forces had no intention of entering the city. "We should evaluate the situation," he said.
The UN, caught by surprise by the speed of events, had said it was to speed up its preparations for an interim government in Kabul. A meeting of Afghan groups was being planned, possibly in Europe.
----
'Up to 500 executed' after the fall of Mazar
FROM STEPHEN FARRELL IN ISLAMABAD,
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13 2001
UK Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2001390012-2001393887,00.html
SUMMARY executions, abductions and looting have followed the capture of Mazar-i Sharif by Northern Alliance forces, the United Nations said yesterday.
As Red Cross staff buried the victims of the battle for the city, unconfirmed reports emerged of a massacre of Taleban and Pakistanis in a school in the northern capital. UN officials said that it was unclear how many had died or how many such incidents had occurred, but Peter Bouchaert, of Human Rights Watch, said that early reports suggested that up to 500 people had died and 2,000 Taleban had been taken captive.
The World Food Programme (WFP) spoke of "freelance gunmen" fighting in the streets of the city, with civilians being kidnapped and 89 tons of oil, sugar and high-energy biscuits stolen.
The WFP said that in the chaos on the ground, a food convoy en route to Bamiyan had been hit by American airstrikes, with two of the trucks destroyed by shrapnel. It added, however, that the advance by anti-Taleban forces had allowed aid supply routes to reopen.
"Eight per cent of the food is damaged and unusable and two of the trucks have been destroyed," an official said.
Unicef said that Northern Alliance forces had seized ten aid trucks that had been taking carrying water supply equipment in Mazar. Chulho Hyun, a spokesman, said it was concerned for the safety of the trucks' Pashtun drivers. He added that armed men had burst into Unicef's offices soon after the fall of the city and seized computer equipment, furniture and radios.
Retreating Taleban forces also stole all Unicef's vehicles as they fled from Mazar to Pul-i Khumri, and the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan said that 24 of its 26 vehicles had been looted last week, just before the Taleban fled.
Others, however, said that the situation appeared to be calm in towns and provinces that had fallen to the Alliance.Peter Bulling, of the Swedish Committee, said that local staff had reported Taloqan and Pul-i-Khumri to be relatively quiet.
"There have not been any revenge attacks. We were very much afraid that the Pashtun population would be attacked, but so far so good," he said.
-------
Taliban deserts Kabul, rebels move into capital
USA Today
11/13/2001
http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/13/attacks.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Ignoring appeals to stay out of the capital, Afghan opposition fighters rolled into Kabul on Tuesday after Taliban troops fled. Residents, freed of the Islamic militia's restrictions, celebrated by blaring music from radios and shaving their beards. Under heavy international pressure to share power, the alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, said all Afghan factions - except the Taliban - were invited to Kabul to negotiate a new government. The alliance also asked the United Nations to send teams to help the peace process, he said.
The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, outlined for the Security Council on Tuesday a plan for a two-year transitional government run by Afghans and backed by a multinational security force.
Abdullah said most alliance troops had stayed on the edge of the capital and that a smaller force had entered only to keep the peace and prevent lawlessness after Taliban fighters slipped out of the city under cover of night.
But there were concerns over reprisals by alliance fighters. Heavily armed troops roamed the city, hunting Taliban stragglers and their Arab allies from Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda movement. At least 11 Pakistanis and Arabs fighting for the Taliban were slain.
The United Nations reported that alliance fighters executed 100 Taliban in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif after capturing the city Friday. Abdullah denied the report.
In Washington, President Bush said the United States would "work with the Northern Alliance commanders to make sure they respect the human rights of the people they are liberating."
Bush, speaking at a joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said alliance leaders must "recognize that a future government must include a representative from all of Afghanistan."
Bush, who had urged the alliance to stay out of Kabul until a broad-based government is formed, said that since entering the city, alliance leaders had "made it very clear they had no intention of occupying Kabul."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called for a U.N. presence in Kabul to be established "as soon as possible" in the Afghan capital. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said the United Nations should send in a peacekeeping force made up of Muslim countries to prevent bloodshed, saying Pakistan and Turkey could contribute.
In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hardline Islamic Taliban movement that has ruled Afghanistan since 1996 was collapsing in disarray. Field commanders were fleeing without contact with the leadership, and some were switching sides, the official said.
The official said an armed force of Pashtuns - the ethnic group that has made up the backbone of the Taliban - were moving against the Taliban near the southern city of Kandahar, the militia's birthplace and headquarters. The official would not elaborate.
At least 200 Taliban fighters mutinied in Kandahar, and fighting broke out by the city's airport, a Taliban official, Mullah Najibullah, said at the Pakistani border at Chaman.
The Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, made a radio address denouncing deserters and urging his followers to fight, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.
"This is my order: that you should obey your commander," Omar said, according to the agency. Deserters "would be like a hen and die in some ditch." The agency quoted him as saying he was in Kandahar, though that could not be independently verified.
There were signs the Taliban were abandoning cities in the south, possibly to wage a guerrilla war from the mountains. A Kandahar resident contacted by telephone said many Taliban appeared to have left the city, except for uniformed militia police.
U.S. airstrikes continued Tuesday, with warplanes targeting caves thought to be hiding places for al-Qa'eda figures, another U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
As the Taliban retreated from Kabul, they took eight foreign aid workers, including two Americans, accused of spreading Christianity in Muslim Afghanistan, guards at the prison where they were held told The Associated Press. The workers were reportedly taken to Kandahar.
As the sun rose over the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul residents celebrated the end of Taliban rule over the city. They shouted out congratulations, honked car horns and rang bells on their bicycles. Men shaved off beards - mandated by the Taliban - and the sounds of music returned after having been banned by the Islamic militia.
Alliance Interior Minister Yunis Qanoni said 3,000 security troops were deployed in the city to maintain order and guard the offices of international agencies. Some offices, including those of the Red Cross and the embassy of Pakistan, have been looted.
Abdullah defended the alliance move into Kabul, saying that after the Taliban left, armed "irresponsible people" caused disturbances. "There was no option for us but to send our security forces into Kabul," he said.
The opposition alliance is largely made up of ethnic minorities, particularly Tajiks and Uzbeks, and is burdened with a past of factional fighting that killed some 50,000 people in Kabul when they last held the city, from 1992 to 1996.
Abdullah said there was a "popular uprising" at the eastern city of Jalalabad. There was no independent confirmation. Taliban guards Tuesday also abandoned the Torkham border station along the Pakistani frontier.
U.S. intelligence believes that Taliban forces are also abandoning Kunduz, their last stronghold in northern Afghanistan, a U.S. official said.
U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker, speaking in Islamabad, reported that 100 Taliban hiding in a school in Mazar-e-Sharif were executed on Saturday and said the opposition was still carrying out "punitive action" there.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said its workers helped bury hundreds of dead in Mazar-e-Sharif. It was unclear how many were civilians and how many Taliban fighters.
"According to reports, in Mazar there is a lot of pillaging as well as civilian kidnappings, armed men out of control and fighting in the streets," said Christiane Berthiaume, spokeswoman for the World Food Program.
Monday night, columns of Taliban vehicles could be seen fleeing Kabul and heading south in an exodus that lasted until sunrise. The Taliban were thought to be heading to Maidan Shahr, a town about 25 miles to the south.
After the alliance moved in, its fighters roamed Kabul in taxis, trucks and cars, seeking out Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and others who had come to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban. Fighters set up roadblocks on streets where foreigners associated with al-Qa'eda had been living.
The international Red Cross picked up 11 bodies of Arabs and Pakistanis. The bodies of five who were killed in a shootout early Tuesday lay in a public park for hours, witnesses said.
Earlier in the day, the bodies of two dead Arabs were on the street near a U.N. guest house. Close to the bodies were rocket launchers and a rifle.
Three captured Taliban fighters, one with blood on his forehead, were seen bound together, being led uphill on a narrow city road and into a building.
On the Shomali Plain on the road to Kabul, a large crowd stood around three dead Taliban fighters.
The alliance's special security troops drove into the capital in cars festooned with pictures of their late commander Ahmed Shah Massood, who was killed in September in a suicide bombing.
Abdullah said the deposed president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, would return to Kabul "when necessary."
The U.N. envoy, Brahimi, called for a meeting as soon as possible.
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Executions of P.O.W.'s Cast Doubts on Alliance
New York Times
November 13, 2001
By DAVID ROHDE
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/international/asia/13AFGH.html
QALA-I-NASRO, Afghanistan, Nov. 12 -- Near an abandoned Taliban bunker, Northern Alliance soldiers dragged a wounded Taliban soldier out of a ditch today. As the terrified man begged for his life, the alliance soldiers pulled him to his feet.
They searched him and emptied his pockets. Then, one soldier fired two bursts from his rifle into the man's chest. A second soldier beat the lifeless body with his rifle butt. A third repeatedly smashed a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher into the man's head.
The killing occurred minutes after Northern Alliance soldiers, advancing toward Kabul, surged deep into Taliban territory. They chose to celebrate with executions.
Ten yards away lay the body of a younger man who alliance soldiers said was a Pakistani. He was on his side with his arms extended. In the side of his head was a bullet hole.
Two hundred yards away, the soldiers who had minutes earlier shot the older man searched the possessions of a motionless Taliban soldier on the ground. After emptying the man's pockets, a soldier fired a burst from his rifle into the man. The soldiers moved on quickly, showing no emotion. A few minutes later, someone laid an unused mortar round across the man's throat.
A fourth body a mile away had a bullet wound in the side of the head. The Taliban soldier, flat on his back, had his hands up, as if he had been surprised or surrendering when shot.
Looting was widespread. Alliance soldiers, who have received extensive backing from the United States, plundered Taliban bodies and bunkers, stealing shoes, bags of sugar, flashlights and anything else that they could find. "I got 700,000 afghani!" a soldier who was leaving an abandoned Taliban bunker shouted, flashing a wad of bills worth $20. "I got 700,000!"
The killings here suggested that alliance soldiers might prove difficult to control as their victories build.
The looting and executions were an ugly ending to what began as a well-executed tank and infantry assault. Alliance forces broached Taliban lines near the Bagram Air Base and Khalazai on the western edge of the line.
Taliban lines broke after a two-hour bombardment and an hourlong tank and infantry attack. The alliance reported few casualties, with one soldier killed and eight wounded near Bagram.
Alliance soldiers reacted to the corpses in different ways. Nearly all stopped and gazed at the dead. Some searched for valuables. One, in a more dignified gesture, placed a cloth over a corpse.
Attitudes on looting varied. One soldier bragged about his take, showing off a bag of sugar and a pair of sneakers that he had found in a bunker. Another showed off the identification card of a Pakistani, Ahmad Bakhtiar, 22.
Some told other soldiers about their take, particularly when it involved weapons. Others were more discreet. At one point, an officer screamed at his soldiers to stop and rejoin the fight. "Let's go!" he shouted. "Let's go!" Carrying sacks of loot, the soldiers followed.
Taliban soldiers appeared to have left their posts quickly. In one compound, the freshly cooked head of a goat sat on a piece of wood waiting to be carved.
At other sites, bags of clothing and transistor radios were left. The defenses appeared crude but formidable, with a six-foot-deep trench along the front line and machine-gun nests and mortar positions behind it. The Taliban soldiers lived in simple mud huts and cooked food in large vats over open fires.
Three Afghan refugees who left Kabul on Sunday and arrived in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Monday said they were met at three separate highway checkpoints east of Kabul by tense Taliban soldiers. They described the Taliban they saw as disorganized, rattled, cowed by passengers who refused to be searched, and hungry for news from the capital. "They were terribly nervous," said Muhammad Azim, a pediatrician who fled Kabul with his family.
Why the Taliban lines broke so quickly was unclear. American planes carried out their heaviest bombing before the attack in the afternoon. Six B-52's conducted broad-scale bombardment while fighter-bombers hit individual targets.
As Taliban forces fled later in the day, American jets bombed their vehicles. Low morale after the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif in the north may have been a factor in the hasty retreat, alliance officers said. Some defections were also reported.
The American raids appeared to have destroyed enough Taliban tanks and artillery to swing the battle in favor of the alliance.
Alliance tactics were simple. Two groups of assault troops, called Zarbati, attacked with tanks across plains in Bagram, in the center of the line, and in Khalazai, on the western edge. The units were created by Ahmed Shah Massoud, the alliance commander who was assassinated in early September, to give his force more offensive punch.
In Bagram, the Taliban fired scores of mortars at the armored vehicles, but appeared to lack the tanks and heavy weapons to destroy them. The tanks, backed by infantry, attacked along asphalt roads that cannot be mined.
Officers on nearby roofs coordinated tank, artillery and infantry units in the attack. At 3:05, a voice shouted over the radio: "We're past the house! We're past the house!"
That was a signal that alliance forces had broached Taliban lines.
An armored personnel carrier rushed to the line to help out arrived at a chaotic scene. Alliance soldiers shouted at one another as shells and bullets whizzed overhead, and the troops struggled to find pockets of resistance.
Twelve Taliban soldiers were seen running across a field. A soldier fired his machine gun.
Slowly, order was restored, and pockets of resistance were identified and attacked by tanks.
As night fell, alliance officials said a large group of Taliban soldiers, many of them Arab and Pakistani volunteers, had been surrounded on the northern part of the Shamali Plain. Alliance forces on the western side of the plain advanced 10 miles south, to Qara Bagh, which is 15 miles north of Kabul.
Alliance forces that were attacking from the center of the line advanced six miles, to Poluborikau, which is 25 miles from Kabul.
Throughout the night, rockets and artillery from the two sides intermittently fired on each other. Alliance commanders said they would continue advancing toward Kabul in the morning.
The commander of 300 soldiers in the special Zarbati units, "Captain Habib," who took part in the attack, seemed unconcerned when told of the killings. "The soldiers must have been very angry," he said, and he shrugged.
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Peace plan would aid rival tribes
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 13, 2001
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20011113-5357624.htm
The Bush administration plans to maintain peace in a postwar Afghanistan by promising aid to rival tribes and closely monitoring defecting Taliban soldiers to ensure they are changing sides permanently, officials said yesterday.
While the opposition Northern Alliance controls Mazar-e-Sharif and while the capital, Kabul, seems certain to fall in the coming weeks, administration officials warn that the tough phase for the U.S. military still lies ahead.
Special-operations troops and the CIA must locate and eliminate hundreds, if not thousands, of hard-core members of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network to meet President Bush's operational goals, they said.
"I think it is important that al Qaeda and Taliban be taken out of Kabul, and every inch of that country," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Fox News Channel.
Officials said it would make no sense to stop military action once the radical Taliban militia loses power. They would simply reorganize and mount an insurgency against what Washington hopes will be a broad-based coalition government.
To keep the peace, the administration plans to avoid the kind of tribal warfare in the 1990s that led to the Taliban's rise to power five years ago.
The United States will attempt to keep the peace among the southern Pashtun tribes nominally loyal to the Taliban and among the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups who make up the Northern Alliance. The unifier: cold hard cash.
One official said the peacemaking could be as simple as the CIA delivering cash payments to various warlords, plus promises to rebuild infrastructure and supply large amounts of food.
"Make it in their interests to cooperate," this official said.
Said Mr. Rumsfeld: "The country has a history of a lot of conflict, a lot of fighting among the tribes. On the other hand, at some point, there is exhaustion."
One official said the administration expects committed Taliban soldiers to keep fighting, perhaps in a last stand in their stronghold of Kandahar in southeast Afghanistan. Those Taliban members who do defect will need to go through some type of vetting procedure to ensure they do not try to destabilize a new government.
"You see in the defections Taliban militia who come from different Pashtun elements or clans," the official said. "These are the ones you want to try to buy off."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell predicted this week that some of the southern Pashtun tribes that had supported the Taliban's harsh rule will break away.
"I think they might start deciding that there's a better life to be had by separating themselves from the Taliban and trying to help the Afghan people, rather than keep this repressive, evil regime in place that supports Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
With Afghanistan controlled by the opposition this winter, the United States will focus on killing Taliban soldiers and al Qaeda members. The methods promise to be fierce and shadowy, some involving special- operations troops, others conducted by the CIA.
"Once the Taliban comes down, you can use special operations forces, in conjunction with elements of the Northern Alliance, to hunt down al Qaeda and the senior leadership of al Qaeda," said an official.
Mr. Rumsfeld has said it will take ground action, as well as the ongoing air campaign, to rid the country of terrorists. He predicts the operation will take months, but not years.
The Pentagon estimates that with the Taliban there are about 5,000 Arab fighters provided by and paid for by bin Laden. "If the Afghan Arabs are as ferocious as they say, then we might have a dogfight on our hands," the official said.
A senior U.S. intelligence official said that in his opinion, once the United States kills Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, bin Laden, and his key aides -- Ayman al Zawahiri