Osama desparately seeking nukes:
dailynews.yahoo.com
Tuesday November 6 5:42 PM ET
U.S. Doubles Troops, Says Bin Laden Seeking Nukes
By Charles Aldinger and Mike Collett-White
WASHINGTON/RABAT, Afghanistan (news - web sites) (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it had doubled its elite force of special operations troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and President Bush (news - web sites) for the first time accused Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) of seeking nuclear weapons.
In the air war, the United States pounded the ruling Taliban front lines north of the capital Kabul on the 31st day of the campaign to oust the Islamic fundamentalists and their Saudi-born militant ``guest,'' prime suspect in September's mass killings on U.S. soil.
In the north of the central Asian country, anti-Taliban forces reported gaining ground in an effort to recapture the strategic city of Mazar-i-Sharif, which commands key Taliban supply lines to western Afghanistan.
The humanitarian organization Oxfam said tens of thousands of people in remote regions of Afghanistan could be dead within months unless combatants acted quickly to prevent starvation.
On the germ warfare front anthrax contamination spread to a U.S. consulate on the edge of Siberia in Russia and to another in Pakistan.
And on the economic front the U.S. Federal Reserve (news - web sites) cut interest rates by an aggressive half-percentage point for the third time since the Sept. 11 suicide attacks in an effort to stimulate growth that was further dampened by the crisis.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said special forces troops on the ground in Afghanistan had more than doubled from fewer than 100 announced last week, and more were preparing to go in when weather permitted to help pinpoint bombing targets.
Bad weather, including freezing rain that keeps helicopters from flying safely, and ground fire by Afghanistan's ruling Taliban have foiled recent attempts to insert more forces.
Rumsfeld said ground troops were spotting Taliban targets near the front line with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and supplying the opposition with weapons, ammunition and food.
He said sorties by U.S. warplanes had reached 120 daily in the campaign to topple the Taliban and bin Laden, whom Washington accuses of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks with hijacked airliners that killed some 4,800 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
BUSH'S NUCLEAR WARNING
Bush added nuclear weapons to the biological and chemical arms he has already accused bin Laden's al Qaeda network of seeking and said that if they were successful they would threaten every nation in the world and civilization itself.
In a speech via satellite to a conference of Eastern European leaders in Warsaw, Poland, part of an effort to rally allies in his war on terrorism, he compared al Qaeda to the fascists and totalitarians of the past half century.
``We see the same intolerance of dissent, the same mad global ambitions, the same brutal determination to control every life, and all of life. We have seen the true nature of these terrorists, and the nature of their attacks,'' Bush said.
``They're seeking chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given the means, our enemies would be a threat to every nation and eventually, to civilization itself.''
In the past Bush has said he would not put the U.S. anthrax outbreak stemming from contaminated mail beyond bin Laden.
Bush later met French President Jacques Chirac at the White House and afterward ratcheted up pressure on foreign nations to support the war on terrorism.
Without singling out any country or saying what they should do he said, ``A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy. A coalition partner must perform. All nations, if they want to fight terror, must do something. It is time for action.''
Chirac said 2,000 French troops were now involved in military operations in the war against terrorism.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Tuesday his country would provide up to 3,900 troops in response to a U.S. request for ``Fuchs'' armored vehicles equipped to check terrain for contamination, as well as medical staff, special forces, air transport capacity and a naval detachment.
The worldwide anthrax scare extended to the edge of Siberia when the U.S. consulate in Yekaterinburg, Russia, said anthrax spores were found in one of six unclassified diplomatic mailbags received from Washington and opened on Oct. 25.
The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan said white powder that tested positive for anthrax and was undergoing further tests was sent to the Lahore consulate in a letter mailed inside the country.
A spate of anthrax-laced letters sent through the U.S. mail has contaminated government offices including a mail facility serving the White House. There have been 17 confirmed cases to date, four of which were fatal.
AFGHAN FOES REPORT ADVANCE
In Afghanistan, the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance said it had gained ground in an effort to recapture Mazar-i-Sharif.
``Our fighters have seized Zari Bazar, Baluch and Wayemar areas near Keshendeh in Balkh in overnight fighting,'' said Ustad Muhakik, one of the three veteran commanders fighting to take the city which controls access to western Afghanistan.
Keshendeh lies some 25 miles (40 kms) south of the city and has been at the heart of fighting for several weeks.
Other opposition forces fighting near the western city of Herat said they were bogged down against entrenched Taliban positions and were short of ammunition and weapons.
U.S. warplanes bombed Taliban positions behind the front lines north of Kabul, targeting tanks and artillery which look down on the opposition-held Bagram airbase.
Ten explosions could be seen around Kubacha and Mirsambat in the morning as warplanes flew high above the Shomali plain for about an hour.
The opposition Northern Alliance has called on the United States to step up air attacks on the enemy north of Kabul.
Its commander welcomed the use of B-52 heavy bombers to strafe strips of ground and carpet-bomb small areas, but Taliban reinforcements have been reported arriving at the front in their hundreds almost every day.
Opposition commander Mustafah, watching the jet fighters circling well out of the range of Taliban anti-aircraft guns, said there were six tanks in the hills of Kubacha which helped to render Bagram unusable by firing on the airstrip.
``This is an important position for the Taliban,'' he said stroking his long black beard as he lay on the roof of his house, his pet yellow canary in a cage next to him, and pointed to the fighter jets gleaming against the sun.
``If the tanks can be taken out, then it means we are closer to using Bagram for takeoffs and landings.''
TALIBAN PARADE HELICOPTER
In Kabul, the Taliban paraded what they said were parts of a downed U.S. helicopter through the war-shattered city in a show of defiance, but the Pentagon (news - web sites) denied it had been downed. It said bad weather forced a helicopter to crash.
After dark a U.S. warplane fired two missiles into central Kabul, sending up a column of smoke and dust behind a school.
The Taliban say the U.S.-led campaign is a crusade against Islam and say it has killed more than 1,500 people, many of them civilians. Washington says these figures are exaggerated.
The United States, criticized in different corners of the Muslim world, says it will fight on through the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins in mid-November.
A fact-finding mission from the British-based Oxfam called for a cease-fire and secure zones to help deliver food as part of several proposals to meet a ``terrible humanitarian crisis.''
``Those involved in seeking to address the crisis now predict tens of thousands may be dead by the end of next month, more than 100,000 children dead by the end of winter,'' the Oxfam report said.
The Federal Reserve lowered its key federal funds rate for overnight bank loans for the 10th time this year to 2 percent -- the lowest level since during the Kennedy administration in 1961.
``Heightened uncertainty and concerns about a deterioration in business conditions both here and abroad are damping economic activity,'' the Fed said.
The economy was already slowing before Sept. 11, when hijacked aircraft flattened the World Trade Center in New York and damaged the Pentagon, halting much national commerce for days and inflicting lasting scars on airline and other industries.
The FBI (news - web sites) said a warning it issued on Oct. 31 about the possibility of attempts to sabotage bridges in California had been found on investigation to be groundless.
It said the warning had been based on information which turned out not to be credible. |
