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Signs emerge that KABUL/WASHINGTON, Dec 28: Afghanistan said Osama bin Laden had escaped to neighboring Pakistan but the head of a radical Islamic group said to be sheltering the world’s most wanted man poured cold water on the charge. ...more Afghanistan
seeks KABUL, Dec 28: Afghanistan is demanding the United States halt its bombing, possibly within days, since almost all remaining hideouts of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden have been destroyed, an Afghan Defence ....more India’s response against Pak restrained: Experts NEW YORK, Dec 28: Taking strong exception to charges that New Delhi over-reacted against Islamabad after the Dec 13 attack on Parliament by ....more |
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G8 "concerned"
about MOSCOW, Dec 28: The Group of Eight (G8) expressed "serious concern" today about the escalating standoff between India and Pakistan and urged restraint on both the sides.. ....more Pak
Army deployed, ISLAMABAD, Dec 28: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said its armed forces were "deployed everywhere" to meet any challenge and to give a ......more Al-Qaeda pockets to be wiped out "in 3-4 days" KAUBL, Dec 28: The last pockets of Al-Qaeda resistance should be crushed "in three or four days" after which the new Afghan rulers will decide whether the US-led bombing campaign was still necessary, a Defence .....more |
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Signs emerge that Bin Laden may not be spent force KABUL/WASHINGTON, Dec 28: Afghanistan said Osama bin Laden had escaped to neighboring Pakistan but the head of a radical Islamic group said to be sheltering the world’s most wanted man poured cold water on the charge. In other chilling signs that Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network were not yet a spent force, Bin Laden himself vowed destruction was assured for the United States even if he was killed and there was a report of an assassination attempt against the commander of US forces in Afghanistan. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not rule out that Bin Laden, chief suspect in September 11 suicide plane attacks on the United States, had fled Afghanistan for another country but said he had stopped chasing reports of his whereabouts. "We hear six, seven, eight, ten, 12 conflicting reports every day. I’ve stopped chasing them," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. "We do know of certain knowledge he is either in Afghanistan or some other country or dead and we know of certain knowledge that we don’t know which of those happens to be the case." The Afghan Defense Ministry said Bin Laden had slipped into Pakistan and was being protected by followers of Islamic radical leader, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, who had helped create the Taliban, the ousted Government the United States charged had given sanctuary to Bin Laden. " Bin Laden and his men are no longer here," said ministry spokesman Mohamad Habeel, who would not reveal his sources and said he did not know where in Pakistan Bin Laden was. Rehman denied the report. "This is a political gimmick," he told Reuters from his home in northwest Pakistan where he is under house arrest. But in a telling comment on how elusive Bin Laden has proved, a senior defense official revealed that since the United States started its attacks on Afghanistan in October, its forces had never come close enough to finding the Saudi-born radical to attack his location. The United States never had "actionable intelligence," or information that could be acted on immediately, on Bin Laden’s whereabouts since launching its military campaign in Afghanistan on October seven, the senior defense official said. "If there had been, we would have gotten him," said the official, who asked not to be named. Pakistan has sent troops and paramilitaries to its porous 2,400-km Afghan border and has arrested hundreds of Bin Laden supporters trying to cross. It has handed 20 of them back to US marines in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said. In a videotape released by Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television station on thursday, Bin Laden told the United States that it would soon collapse, whether he lived or died, as Muslims around the world had "awakened" to its tyranny. Al-Jazeera had first aired excerpts on Wednesday of the 34-minute-long message, in which Bin Laden said the west held an "indescribable amount of crusader loathing for Islam." The channel said Bin Laden’s videotape was mailed from Pakistan but had lain unopened on a Secretary’s desk for two days before someone noticed it on Wednesday. It did not say how it got the tape or when or where it had been shot, though the channel’s anchor said it could have been recorded in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as Bin Laden was swallowing constantly. Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk during Ramjan which ended on December 15. "We say that the end of the United States is imminent, whether Bin Laden or his followers are alive or dead, for the awakening of the Muslim Umma (nation) has occurred," Bin Laden said. NBC nightly news reported a shoulder-launched, anti-aircraft missile was fired at a group of four helicopters ferrying the commander of the US campaign, General Tommy Franks, to the inauguration of new Afghan leader Hamid Karzai on Saturday. Quoting military sources, the network said Franks’ helicopter had been forced to take evasive action but that the missile "was several hundred feet off target." Neither the Pentagon nor US central command would comment on the report. In war developments, US planes destroyed a compound overnight believed to be used by leaders of Afghanistan’s fallen Taliban militia near Ghazni, southwest of Kabul, the Pentagon said. At least two B-52 bombers and one AC-130 gunship destroyed the high-walled complex using precision and non-precision bombs, Pentagon spokesman Admiral Craig Quigley said. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters there were "very good indications the compound was inhabited by Taliban leadership." He was unaware of reports from the area that up to 40 villagers had been killed in a US nighttime bombing raid. "The attack took place when the people were asleep," said one tribal source, quoting witnesses from Naka village. Myers, the top US military officer, once again defended a controversial raid last Friday on a convoy in Paktia province. Tribal leaders have maintained the convoy was made up strictly of supporters of the new, US-backed interim Government on their way to Kabul to attend a swearing-in ceremony. "We have nothing to indicate anything other than what we said before, in that, that convoy was, again, leadership that was involved in this war on terrorism," he said. Pakistan, thrown into crisis by the Afghan war, also faced rising tension on its border with India in disputed Kashmir. Indian and Pakistani forces fired on each other over the border as India, which says thwarting Kashmir guerrillas is part of the "war on terrorism," imposed sanctions on Pakistan, which it blames for a suicide attack this month on its Parliament. Pakistan retaliated and the United States urged the nuclear rivals to talk. In New York, Rudolph Giuliani, hailed worldwide for his leadership of New York city since the Sept. 11 attacks, bid farewell yesterday to his job as mayor with a closing speech urging construction of a "soaring, beautiful" memorial at the World Trade Center site. Giuliani, marking the end of eight years in office with an emotional 50-minute address to about 400 supporters and staff, said such a monument would induce a much-needed economic rebuilding of Manhattan’s badly damaged downtown. "This place has to be sanctified," Giuliani said. (AGENCIES) |
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Afghanistan seeks end to US bombing KABUL, Dec 28: Afghanistan is demanding the United States halt its bombing, possibly within days, since almost all remaining hideouts of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden have been destroyed, an Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman said today. The request was a sign of potential problems between the new Afghan Government and the US military, whose bombing campaign helped to sweep them to power. "We demand America stop its bombing of Afghanistan after this goal is achieved," Spokesman Mohammad Habeel told newsmen, adding that the task of rooting out remaining targets linked to Bin Laden or the country’s ousted Taliban rulers was almost complete. "Their remaining forces are few in number and may be annihilated in a maximum of three days and once this is done there is no need for the continuation of the bombing," he said. "Without the approval of local commanders and the Defence Ministry, America cannot bomb Afghanistan at will," he added. His remarks came a day after a tribal elder said interim leader, Hamid Karzai, would ask the United States to halt aerial attacks on an eastern province where a convoy of guests to his inauguration had been bombed with heavy losses. Witnesses and survivors said the convoy — apparently ouble-crossed — came under attack in eastern Paktia province last week as it was en route to the inauguration of Karzai’s Government at the weekend, killing about 65 people. "All commanders who have been involved in opposing the Taliban and Osama say that these people no longer have the ability and presence to pose a threat," Habeel said. "They are in small numbers in mountainous areas along the border with Pakistan and they should be finished off in a matter of days," Habeel added. Locals said enemies of those in the convoy may have passed information on its whereabouts to the pentagon, calling in planes to bomb it. US officials have insisted the convoy opened fire on US aircraft just before it was bombed and had been carrying leaders of Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and the taliban. The incident highlights the tribal rivalries that have riven Afghanistan for centuries and which have intensified in recent years as warlords have battled for territory in the confusion resulting from the 1979-89 Soviet occupation. Also hanging over the Government was the issue of whether Saudi-born Bin Laden was still on the run in Afghanistan. Habeel stood by his remarks a day earlier that the fugitive millionaire was in hiding in Pakistan under the protection of supporters of a Radical Islamic leader who helped to create the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban. Maulana Fazalur Rehman, head of the militant Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Party, who is under house arrest, swiftly dismissed Habeel’s statement as a "joke". But Habeel brushed aside that denial. "He would say it anyway because he fears America will pursue him there and may start bombing suspected areas there in Pakistan," he said. "I think no one wants to confirm his presence," he added. (AGENCIES) |
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India’s response against Pak restrained: Experts NEW YORK, Dec 28: Taking strong exception to charges that New Delhi over-reacted against Islamabad after the Dec 13 attack on Parliament by Pak-supported terrorist outfits, experts have said that India’s response was restrained and asked Pakistan to hand over Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar to India. A former Pakistani diplomat, Malik Zahoor Ahmad, had said during a television programme on Wednesday: "What Indians are doing, that surprises me, because this incident was not that serious an issue to do what they have done." Strongly rebutting him, Sumit Ganguly, Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, said India’s reaction was actually "extraordinary restrained." "How would we feel here in the United States if terrorists came and tried to attack our nation’s capital?" Ganguly, who is an American citizen said. Echoing Ganguly’s views, former US State Department Official David Kux said, "this is not a trivial thing. Trying to blow up the nation’s capital and kill the leaders of the nation is something awful." Ganguly said "if a terrorist group based in a neighbouring country were to come and attack our national capital and the two houses of Congress, I dare say our response would be somewhat more than what Indians have done." If Pakistan is really serious, it should hand over Masood Azhar to India, he said, noting Azhar was languishing in an Indian prison and was released as a consequence of certain terrorist demands when an Indian Airliner was hijacked. (PTI) |
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G8 "concerned" about Indo-Pak standoff MOSCOW, Dec 28: The Group of Eight (G8) expressed "serious concern" today about the escalating standoff between India and Pakistan and urged restraint on both the sides. In a statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the grouping of the world’s seven most industrialised nations and Russia called on India and Pakistan to resolve their differences through political dialogue. "We hope that both countries will avoid escalation, will resume political dialogue (...) and join their efforts in the fight against the global terrorist threat," said the statement which was translated from Russian. The G8 Foreign Ministers, who signed the declaration, said they felt "serious concern about the rise in tension between India and Pakistan following the attack on the Indian Parliament building on December 13." Russia yesterday had asked Italy, as Chairman of the G8 countries, to prepare a common declaration to try and ease tensions between India and Pakistan. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said the same day that he was following developments between India and Pakistan with "attention and apprehension." (AFP) |
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Pak Army deployed, Govt may levy war surcharge: Musharraf ISLAMABAD, Dec 28: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf said its armed forces were "deployed everywhere" to meet any challenge and to give a matching response to any aggressive move even as its Government was reportedly considering levying war surcharge and a ban on heavy non-defence imports. "Our troops are deployed everywhere to meet any challenge with force. If anybody attacks Pakistan, the country will be defended at all costs," Musharraf told a meeting of high officials. Pakistan daily ‘The News’ gave details of the meeting relating to the tensions on the Indo-Pak border. During the meeting with clerics, he is reported to have devoted more time about his efforts to give a moderate image to Islam and to contain the activities of sectarian and extremist organisations. The newspaper also said that Pakistan Government was seriously considering imposition of war surcharge in view of the heavy military build up at the borders between India and Pakistan. The tax could be levied if the present tension between India and Pakistan escalates into a war, it said. Officials said surcharge would at a minimum be five per cent. To this effect, a proposal to amend the war book is expected but not for January and February 2002. However, such an amendment would be made "only in case the Indian war build up poses a clear threat war," the paper said. A number of recent meetings have been held by the relevant high authorities to consider resource position of the country, especially in view of the continuing international sanctions on defence related purchases, the paper said. These sanctions have not been removed despite repeated assertions to this effect by the members of international coalition agains terrorism, it said adding that sanctions made it difficult for Pakistan to timely secure materials for defence production for its land, air and naval forces, while prices of supplies from sources defying the sanctions have risen for the country. Officials said the war surcharge could be a minimum five per cent, if imposed, while a list of items to be banned for import would be chalked out jointly by the Ministries of Defence and Commerce, the paper said. A meeting of business leaders is scheduled here for tomorrow to discuss proposals to mobilise additional resources. (PTI) |
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Al-Qaeda pockets to be wiped out "in 3-4 days" KAUBL, Dec 28: The last pockets of Al-Qaeda resistance should be crushed "in three or four days" after which the new Afghan rulers will decide whether the US-led bombing campaign was still necessary, a Defence Ministry official said today. "The Americans should not stop their bombardment until we have advised ... Them to do so," said Mohammad Habeel, spokesman for Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim. "After Tora Bora there has been no massive resistance in front of our ground troops and the American Air Force. "I hope this scattered resistance also will finish in three or four days time." (AFP) |
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