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UK set for long-term LONDON, Oct 9: The British Government was gearing up today for a "long haul" military campaign against Afghanistan, but said air strikes against the ........more Mexico
has high MEXICO CITY, Oct 9: Mexico has lofty aspirations for its new seat on the UN Security Council, a post it hopes to use...more Next
phase of strikes WASHINGTON, Oct 9: When the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan starts to wind down at the end of this week, the Defence Department plans.....more Anti-terrorism security expanded in Japan TOKYO, Oct 9: Anti-terrorism security measures have been expanded to cover 580 facilities in Japan, including those of countries which support the......more |
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Peace-making Pak KARACHI, Oct 9: An Islamic cleric, who headed a last-ditch Pakistani peace-making mission to the ruling Afghan Taliban last month, today said all ........more Don’t
use ‘pretext of DUBAI, Oct 9: Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri has said any targeting of Iraq by the United States and Britain would be using the "pretext of terrorism" to .....more Asian
papers cool SINGAPORE, Oct 9: Newspapers in Asia gave a cautious reception to the U.S-led attacks on Afghanistan and called for a diplomatic solution which......more Week
Bush planned WASHINGTON, Oct 9: US President George W Bush began the countdown to military strikes on Afghanistan last Tuesday, telling top aides, "the Bush. .......more |
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UK set for long-term military action, short-term air strikes LONDON, Oct 9: The British Government was gearing up today for a "long haul" military campaign against Afghanistan, but said air strikes against the Taliban regime were likely to last "a matter of days rather than weeks". Prime Minister Tony Blair told an emergency recall of Parliament last night that Britain was involved in military action in Afghanistan "for the long haul" as he confirmed the second night of air strikes against the ruling Taliban. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw earlier insisted that military action would last "weeks". "We’re certainly not talking days, unless something absolutely dramatic happens," he said. British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon’s later admission that air strikes could be over in "a matter of days rather than weeks" suggested that ground troops may be called upon sooner rather than later. "I anticipate that it (an end to air strikes) is more likely to be a matter of days rather than weeks," Hoon told BBC’s newsnight. "That’s the present intention. Obviously it just depends on how successful those attacks are and indeed on whether we find further targets to address, but for the moment that is the anticipation." Hoon added that although the use of British ground troops in Afghanistan was an option, no decision on the matter had yet been taken. "That is one of the options we are looking at. There have been no specific decisions taken yet about ground forces," he said. (AFP) |
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Mexico has high hopes for UN Security Council seat MEXICO CITY, Oct 9: Mexico has lofty aspirations for its new seat on the UN Security Council, a post it hopes to use as a springboard for an increased role in global affairs, Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda has said. Mexico beat out the dominican republic in a run-off ballot yesterday to clinch the Council’s Latin American and Caribbean seat. It will join the 15-member council in January 2002, along with other new members Syria, Guinea, Cameroon and Bulgaria. "Mexico is convinced that the best way to guarantee its national interests in the long term is through an active, decided participation in the global agenda together with leading nations that have been at the vanguard of the construction of a new world system," Castaneda told reporters. He said a seat on the prestigious council would allow Mexico to boost its international profile and play a central role in debates over the shifting world order, particularly in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Castaneda said the new post would also help Mexico put its relationship on a more equal footing with the United States, its partner in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Canada is also a member of NAFTA. "If Mexico wants to have a strategic relationship with the united states, one that goes beyond NAFTA ... We have to develop and consolidate a position with a much more active participation in all multilateral areas," Castaneda said. Mexico relies on the United States to buy 85 per cent of its exports, though the massive northern flow of drugs and migrants has often strained the relationship. Many Mexicans complain of American condescension, while others harbor resentment over the US seizure of a wide swath of Mexican territory in a mid-19th century war. Mexican President Vicente Fox, in a series of meetings with US President George W Bush, has pushed hard to overcome the acrimony, though his 10-month-old Government is likely to face continued dissent over its growing global profile. His staunch support for the United States after the attacks last month in New York and near Washington, for example, drew sharp fire from opponents who accused the Government of "selling out" by supporting hawkish actions alien to Mexico’s traditional neutrality. Opinion polls showed mixed feelings among the public. But fox shrugged off the criticism on Sunday night, vowing in a national television address to support US-led attacks on Afghanistan’s Taliban Government which began on Sunday. "Mexico — as part of the international community — cannot and should not evade its responsibility in the face of the barbarity of terrorism," Fox said. The Security Council has five permanent members with Veto power — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. Another 10 non-permanent members rotate for two-year terms, five of them each year, according to geographical regions. Mexico had not vied for a council seat since 1980-1981. (REUTERS) |
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Next phase of strikes to include ground troops: Post WASHINGTON, Oct 9: When the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan starts to wind down at the end of this week, the Defence Department plans to begin the next phase of the war on terrorism by sending a "significant number" of additional ground troops to the Middle East and central asia, the Washington Post reported today, quoting defence officials. The deployment of the additional forces is not a prelude to a full-scale conventional ground attack on Afghanistan, they said, but the next step in what is essentially an ad hoc approach to an unconventional war. Their presence will give planners maximum flexibility as they consider options in the days ahead, a senior defence official told the Washington Post. "They (the troops) will start to go, but it’s not because we have a clear and defined plan," the official said. "We want to position ourself in such a fashion that we have a wide range of options." The additional troops could do everything from bolstering the border defences of Uzbekistan to flying into Afghanistan to temporarily holding an airfield or cordoning off an area that is being searched, officials indicated. Asked whether the Pentagon is considering large-scale ground attacks inside Afghanistan, one official said, "nothing has been ruled out." (DPA) |
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Anti-terrorism security expanded in Japan TOKYO, Oct 9: Anti-terrorism security measures have been expanded to cover 580 facilities in Japan, including those of countries which support the US-led military action against Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Japanese National Public Safety Commission said today. Security was being provided to 59 British facilities and facilities of countries which have expressed support for the air strikes, as well as 34 domestic research facilities, including nuclear power facilities in 16 prefectures, Commission Chairman Jin Murai told reporters in Tokyo. Before the launch of Sunday’s air and missile strikes on Afghanistan, the Japanese police had already placed some 450 facilities nationwide under tight security. More than 400 riot police personnel have been dispatched to Okinawa, Japan’s most southern prefecture, where most of the US military bases in Japan are located. In a related action, Japan’s Trade Ministry said Tuesday it will tighten controls of chemical substances in Japan to prevent their use in acts of terrorism. The ministry said it plans to strengthen inspections at the 120 business and research facilities in the country that handle some of the 43 chemical substances designated by law as convertible to chemical weapons. Japan’s Transport Minister, Chikage Ogi, also said Tuesday that Japan has prepared for possible hijackings. She said the ministry has prepared a written manual for dealing with hijack incidents. The manual includes closing all airports in Japan if a Japanese airplane is hijacked, as well as making sure no strangers are able to enter a driver’s room in Shinkansen bullet trains. (DPA) |
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Peace-making Pak cleric calls for holy war KARACHI, Oct 9: An Islamic cleric, who headed a last-ditch Pakistani peace-making mission to the ruling Afghan Taliban last month, today said all Muslims had a duty to rise in Jihad, or holy war, in response to the US-led attacks on Afghanistan. Mufti Nazimuddin Shamzai, a senior cleric at a radical religious school, or Madrassa, in the southern port city of Karachi, told reuters he had issued a decree calling on Muslims to fight Jihad against forces attacking Afghanistan. "Jihad is now compulsory on all Muslims after the US attacks on Afghanistan because Muslims in and around Afghanistan cannot defend the Islamic Emirates (of Afghanistan). The safety of the Islamic Emirates is now a religious duty of every Muslim," he said. Shamzai headed a 10-member delegation of senior Pakistani clerics that met Taliban leaders in Kandahar on September 28. The talks did not succeed in convincing the Taliban to hand over the fugitive Osama Bin Laden, wanted in connection with the September 11 attacks in the United States. US-led attacks on targets in Afghanistan have now continued through a second night. (REUTERS) |
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Don’t use ‘pretext of terrorism’ to attack: Iraq to America DUBAI, Oct 9: Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri has said any targeting of Iraq by the United States and Britain would be using the "pretext of terrorism" to settle old scores. One day after US and British forces began an air campaign over Afghanistan to "smoke out" the prime US suspect behind September 11 hijack attacks on New York and Washington, which killed nearly 5,600 people, the United States warned it may have to launch military strikes against other nations and groups. "Should the United States and its ally Britain wish to expand the range of their aggression on Iraq under the pretext of terrorism that means they want to settle their accounts with Iraq," Sabri told Al-Jazeera satellite television yesterday. US and British forces began an air offensive on Sunday against Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who had refused to hand over Islamic militant Osama Bin Laden, Washington’s main suspect in the hijacked airliner attacks that demolished New York’s World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon near Washington. Yesterday US Ambassador John Negroponte said in a letter to the United Nations Security Council that US self defence may require "further actions with respect to other organizations and other states." But Sabri said Washington and London "know that Iraq had no role in what happened in New York and Washington". The Iraqi Foreign Minister also denounced the continued enforcement of Northern and Southern no-fly zones over Iraq by US and British fighter jets. "Iraqi villages and cities are the target of shelling on a daily basis by US and British aircraft," he said. Sabri is in Qatar to take part in an emergency meeting of the 56-member Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), called by Iran to formulate a Muslim stance to the US attacks. "They (OIC countries) should formulate a unified position that rejects aggression against Arab and Muslim states and rejects confusing terrorism with Islam," Sabri said. "We hope that Arabs and Muslims would take a unified and just stance, because the aggression targets all Arabs and Muslims. The great terrorist campaign that the United States launched targets all." (REUTERS) |
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Asian papers cool on Afghanistan raids SINGAPORE, Oct 9: Newspapers in Asia gave a cautious reception to the U.S-led attacks on Afghanistan and called for a diplomatic solution which would not only eradicate terrorism but also address age-old conflicts in the Arab world. "It is of crucial importance that in the aftermath of the action in Afghanistan, the Bush administration throws its considerable weight into a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute," Hong Kong’s south China Morning Post said. "The same coalition of nations that has thrown its weight behind the action against Osama bin Laden must back the United States in a peace effort as well... Once this is done, there is one less reason for a generation of embittered Arabs to take up cudgels against the rest of the world," the paper added. Japanese papers in general were rather cool about the strikes, taking pains to emphasise that it was "a war against terror, not Muslims", as the English-language daily Yomiuri put it. "International society has set out on coordinated action against what was a huge challenge to freedom, democracy, human rights," the Mainichi Shimbun said. The Asahi Shimbun was more resigned. "It is best to stay away from military action altogether. However, in order to destroy a terrorist organisation that has taken on international society, a limited military action...Is unavoidable." Chinese newspapers largely stuck to factual accounts of developments related to Afghanistan. In an editorial, the state-run China daily newspaper said it did not doubt U.S. sincerity in persuing "carefully targeted actions" in Afghanistan and that it hoped ordinary people would not be hurt. "We only hope civilians will be saved from the war and peace will be restored as soon as possible," the paper said. Taiwan’s two main dailies both hoped for a speedy end to U.S military operations in Afghanistan. "If the war fails or drags on, or if their are too many...casualties, anti-war voices in the U.S and the west will become the mainstream, and Governments in the middle east will either face division or follow popular sentiment and oppose the west. At that time, the nightmare of the ‘clash of civilisations’ will come true," the United Daily News said in an editorial. Singapore’s Straits Times said weakening the Taliban to destroy extremists was in the world’s interest but noted that the attacks on Afghanistan were only part of the battle. "The broader war on terrorism has to be fought on many fronts — financial, diplomatic, political and psychological. Muslims and non-Muslims alike will recognise then that military force...Is a necessary part of a broad, measured and sustained effort to rid the world of a terrible scourge," it said. In Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, the Government’s neutral stance in the conflict drew mixed reactions. The leading Kompas newspaper said the Government’s stance was "correct". But the Republika daily said Indonesia should have condemned the strikes. "The Indonesian Government seems at pains to avoid offending the United States," it said. In predominantly Muslim Malaysia, the Government-friendly new Straits Times echoed Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s comments. It said the air strikes risked provoking "reprisal attacks by terrorists" and warned that the U.S-led coalition could unravel if a protracted conflict developed, as sympathy grew among Arabs and Muslims for the plight of Afghanistan. "It is imperative that the search for a diplomatic solution continues, and urgently." Tellingly, several editors chose photographs of collateral damage from the air strikes for their front pages. Both the new Straits Times and the Star chose pictures of Afghan men picking over the rubble of a destroyed house in Kabul. For the front page of its world news section the new Straits Times picked a photograph of a 16-year-old boy who had lost a foot and several fingers in Sunday night’s strikes.(REUTERS) |
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Week Bush planned strikes seemed ‘a month long’ WASHINGTON, Oct 9: US President George W Bush began the countdown to military strikes on Afghanistan last Tuesday, telling top aides, "the Bush administration will enforce its doctrine." What followed, in the words of White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, was a week that "was a month long." Aides on Monday described an intense week of final preparations for the strikes, then a somber weekend at Camp David as Bush kept an occasional eye on televised football and socialized with family and friends while giving the final orders on Saturday to send the bombers on their way. "We all tried our best to try to be somewhat normal," White House counselor Karen Hughes told reporters of the Camp David weekend. "There was a feeling that there was a seriousness ... A weighty feel to the weekend. And almost a somber undercurrent that what was taking place was very profound," she said. "There were people there, some family and friends, who did not really know the decision. But I think they could all sense that this was a very heavy burden on the president," she said. Bush on Sunday announced the strikes aimed at Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership and the Al Qaeda network of Islamic militant Osama Bin Laden, whom he accuses of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States that killed about 5,600 people. The President had ordered the military to begin planning after the first National Security Council meeting on the Sept 11 attacks, which was held at Camp David the weekend of Sept 15, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said. He set the ball rolling in a Council meeting today in the White House situation room. "He called me to the oval office and told me he was preparing to launch a military operation and asked me to start thinking about an address to the nation," Hughes said. She quoted the President as saying, "The Bush administration will enforce its doctrine." That doctrine, Hughes said, is that "the countries who harbored terrorists would deliver the terrorists or share in their fate." The President emphasized it would be important to prepare the public for a sustained, unconventional war on terrorism on with several fronts that included military action. Bush’s decision to launch the strikes was taken on Friday during a briefing with his military planners in the situation room, Rice said. Officials said the military was unleashed because the time was "ripe," but Rice said Bush felt no need to act "hurriedly" because work was moving ahead to cripple Al Qaeda financially and to gather intelligence. During the Friday meeting, Rice said, the President turned to Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Pentagon Joint Chiefs of Staff, "looked him in the eye" and asked whether Marine Corps Gen. Tommy Franks, who is in charge of US forces in the Gulf and Middle East, was ready. "General Myers said, ‘yes, sir, he’s ready to go.’ and he (Bush) gave the go-ahead. And at that point ... Military operations actually began," Rice said. But before Bush launched the bombers, he held a final meeting with his national security council on saturday morning at Camp David to ensure that all the necessary diplomatic and military steps had been taken. "He (Bush) gave one last check to make sure that all the pieces were in place," Rice said. "The President then, of course, said, ‘you can send the bombers."’ some council members, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, took part by videoconference. Unlike his father, former President George Bush, who had set a deadline for Iraq to pull out of Kuwait before he launched the Gulf war, the current President set no deadline. Instead, he said in his radio address on Saturday that time was running out for the Taliban to meet his demands, which included surrendering Bin Laden. "I think the President really felt like he had given the taliban fair warning. He had done it publicly," Rice said. "But it’s important not to tip, in a sense, exactly when you plan to begin military operations." Hughes said among Bush’s guests at Camp David on Saturday were her husband, jerry, and Bush’s brother marvin. A showdown football game between the University of Oklahoma and Bush’s home-state University of Texas was on the television. "He watched part of it," she said. He missed the end of the game, which Texas lost. In the meantime, she said, staffers were being frequently paged or receiving messages. On Sunday, before he announced the attacks, Bush had one last public duty, to speak at a memorial service near Camp David honoring firefighters who had died in the line of duty. Although Bush had accepted the invitation to speak at the National Fire Academy before the Sept. 11 attacks, the loss of more than 300 firefighters in the collapse of the World Trade Center added extra significance to the event. He finished ahead of schedule and returned to Washington, where Rumsfeld told him the strikes had begun and Bush delivered his speech announcing them. After the speech, he invited aides to lunch in the White House roosevelt room as the operation unfolded. Hughes, who quoted card as saying the last week had been "a month long," said the intense pace let off for a moment during the lunch, before the results of the strikes came in. "I remember looking at everyone and saying, ‘what do we do now?’ and there was really nothing for us to do at that moment. It was mainly wait," she said. (REUTERS) |
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