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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (12217)	9/25/2001 3:13:59 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 80915

Does this say even with-in precious metals mining one must diversify?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (12217)	9/26/2001 5:02:06 PM
From: Ahda	Respond to of 80915

metimes.com Analysts disagree on Bin Laden role in attack By Scott Burnell WASHINGTON Scholars at two think tanks on September 14 were split on whether alleged terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden was a key player in the September 11 terror attacks or if he was part of a larger conspiracy. Panelists at a Brookings Institution discussion made remarks predicated on the idea Bin Laden was the major player in the attack, perhaps with some support from pariah nations. The group focused on the major questions facing President George W. Bush's decision to "declare war on terrorism." James Steinberg, Brookings' director of foreign policy studies, said Bush's actions would turn terrorism into the lens through which the United States worldview is formed, much the same way the Cold War was between World War II and 1991. The dilemma facing policymakers is how to shape that lens, he said. For example, is Pakistan a terrorist-friendly nation for supporting Afghanistan, or is it a key nation in the effort to pressure the ruling Taliban in Afghanistan to repudiate terrorists such as Bin Laden? Stephen Cohen, a Brookings senior fellow who focuses on South Asia, said the presence of many terrorist camps there poses another problem. "(The area) is the Mideast with nuclear weapons," Cohen said, adding the United States has few friends there. Supportive nations would be essential in waging the United States' brand of "total war," Cohen said, so the country might have to wage a longer-term, more limited kind of warfare. Even that course of action must be approached carefully, said James Lindsay, a Brookings senior fellow on national security issues. Some of the nations accused of supporting terrorism are closer to mainstream society, so much so that attacking targets there could trigger a wider war, he said. All the panel members agreed, however, events have moved far past the point where negotiations of any kind with terrorists would have been worth anything. A forum on September 14 at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies took a far different tack, saying Bin Laden could simply be a fall guy for a rogue state. Panelist Laurie Mylroie, who has written extensively on Iraq following the Gulf War, said it is almost impossible to say state intelligence agencies played only a small role in the attack. The "sophisticated" Bin Laden organization was described as far less impressive, she said, during the U.S. trial of a Bin Laden associate in connection with the 1998 African embassy bombings, which were blamed on Bin Laden. Such an ineffective group is unlikely to have pulled off either that attack or this week's tragedy without assistance, she said. Similarities in timing between the embassy attacks and Iraqi resistance to U.N. weapons inspectors are another link in a chain of coincidences connecting Bin Laden and Iraq. Finally, the strong possibility of Iraqi security ties to Ramsi Youssef, convicted in the1993 World Trade Center bombing, leads Mylroie to conclude Iraq itself may have ordered the plane attacks, using Bin Laden as cover. Panel member Charles Fairbanks, director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, also said Bin Laden's participation in the attacks is overstated. Policy makers and defense planners want as manageable a problem as possible, Fairbanks said, so blaming Bin Laden will give the United States an easy way out. The more responsible thing to do would be to spend more time establishing links to state intelligence agencies and then punishing everyone involved in the attack, he said. Fairbanks said the proper response would include retaliation against Bin Laden's infrastructure, Iraq and the Afghanistan government. UPI