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Thursday,
September 20, 2001, Chandigarh, India   |
FBI makes 3 fresh arrests |
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Crisis may
force Pak to CHOGM B’desh allows US use of airspace Omanis ‘not’
involved Sodhi
murder: guilty to be charge-sheeted W. Asia truce holds
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Bush begins parleys for alliance Washington/Berlin, September 19 On Tuesday, French President Jacques Chirac became the first in a parade of foreign leaders to visit the White House after last week’s suicide assaults, expressing solidarity with Bush but stopping short of endorsing his use of the word “war”. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, seeking to bolster London’s credentials as Washington’s staunchest ally, was due to meet German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder this evening before flying to Washington for talks with Bush on Thursday. Bush also meets Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, while Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, whose country holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana meet Secretary of State Colin Powell. Moscow has said it is opposed to any indiscriminate retaliation, calling instead for careful action based on proof, while Michel said on Tuesday he did not regard the fight against those behind the attacks as a war and praised the U.S. authorities for their cautious response up until now. Michel and Solana will brief the 15 EU leaders on their trip at an emergency summit in Brussels on Friday evening, called to consider how the EU can best respond to the crisis. With nearly 6,000 people missing or dead in the attacks, the Bush administration is planning a multi-pronged assault on terrorism, including economic and diplomatic strategies and military options ranging from covert operations to ground war. President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, also meets Bush on Wednesday. Jakarta has urged Bush not to turn Muslims into scapegoats. Bush has named Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden, believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, as the prime suspect in the attacks. Bin Laden has denied involvement. European diplomatic efforts have focused on winning the support of Arab states for the anti-terrorism alliance, with Germany’s Schroeder saying he would meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak next week and build contacts with Syria and Iran. A bellicose President Bush has vowed justice for America’s dead with a war on ‘’terrorism,’’ which is being worked out in secrecy and will use economic and diplomatic strategies as well as military options ranging from covert operations to ground war. Bush, who has seen pledges of support tempered by appeals to keep a cool head, was further encouraged by a show of unity from French President Jacques Chirac who pledged ‘’complete solidarity’’ at a meeting in Washington. Chirac refused to call the US campaign a ‘’war,’’ but Bush did not share his reservations keeping up the nation-at-war theme and appealing for donations to bolster the ‘’home front.’’ In New York, rescue workers in the twisted rubble of the World Trade Center found nothing but bodies and body parts. “The chances of recovering any live human beings are very, very small,’’ said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The list of the missing stood at 5,422 people, he said. Only 218 were confirmed dead, 66 of them unidentified. DUBAI: Saudi Arabia today sent its Foreign Minister and senior security officials to Washington to help in US efforts to track down those behind last week’s suicide attacks on New York and Washington. Gulf officials and analysts said Saudi Arabia appeared embarrassed that many of those suspected by the FBI of taking part in the bombings appeared to be Saudi nationals. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is one of only three countries that recognise Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, which shelters Osama bin Laden. A statement carried by the official Saudi press agency said the delegation, led by Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, would convey the ‘’condolences of King Fahd and the Saudi people to President George W. Bush, the American people and victims of the terrorist attack’’.
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FBI makes
3 fresh arrests Detroit, September 19 The three men, from Algeria and Morocco, were arrested early on Tuesday while the FBI was searching for a fourth man, Nabil Al-Marabh, who is believed to have links to Osama bin Laden, the top suspect in the September 11 attacks. The men, two of whom previously worked for an airline meal service at Detroit metropolitan airport, were formally charged on Tuesday with possession of false identification papers, including passports, social security cards and visas, according to an affidavit obtained by the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. Al-Marabh, one of about 200 people on the FBI’s list of suspects and key witnesses to last week’s attacks in New York and Washington, was not at home at the time of the arrests, the newspapers said. The three men denied knowing Al-Marabh. U.S. Judge Virginia Morgan ordered Karim Koubriti, (23), Farouk Ali-Haimoud, (21), and Ahmed Hannan, (33), held without bond until a hearing on Friday. During a search of the home, federal agents allegedly found a notebook with notations in Arabic related to an American base in Turkey, the “American foreign minister,” and to Queen Alia International Airport in the Jordanian capital Amman, the newspapers said. The Detroit area, particularly the suburb of Dearborn, has one of the largest concentrations of Arab Americans in the USA.
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He holds the key to Bin Laden Islamabad, September 19 Omar is the spiritual leader of the Taliban movement that rules most of the rugged and inhospitable terrain of Afghanistan and provides sanctuary to the world’s most wanted man — Osama bin Laden. He is believed to have been seen by only two non-Muslims — and indeed by few of his own 20 million people. He chose not to appear today at a crucial meeting of hundreds of Islamic clerics at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, instead had a representative read out a speech to the assembly. “Our Islamic state is the true Islamic system in the world and for this reason ... The enemies of our country look on us as a thorn in their eye and seek different excuses to finish it off,” Omar was quoted as saying in the speech. “Osama bin Laden is one of these (excuses),” he said of the man whom US President George W. Bush wants dead or alive. But his passion for hiding in the shadows has not hampered his swift and dramatic accumulation of power over a land so ravaged by war that its people have returned to a life more akin to the Middle Ages than the 21st century. His rigid devotion to Islam is the force that governs his existence, and it is this faith that now rules the lives of Afghans. “We took up arms to achieve the aims of the Afghan jehad (holy war) and save our people from further suffering at the hands of the so-called Mujahideen,” he told a Pakistani reporter in a rare interview. “We had complete faith in god almighty. We never forgot that. He can bless us with victory or plunge us into defeat.” Omar’s leadership and the purist Taliban movement that grew up under that leadership were born together amid frustration and despair after years of internecine war among the Mujahideen factions that had effectively defeated the Soviet Union and then turned on one another in 1992. One story goes that in early 1994, Omar enlisted about 30 “talibs” — the word means student of Islam — after hearing that two teenage girls had been snatched from their village by a Mujahideen commander and raped. With 16 rifles among them, the group attacked the base, freed the girls and captured quantities of arms and ammunition.” “We were fighting against Muslims who had gone wrong. How could we remain quiet when we could see crimes being committed against women and the poor,” Omar told the reporter of The News, Rahimullah Yusufzai, one of the few to interview the recluse. As the momentum for his movement gathered, Omar found eager recruits in the Madrassas, or Islamic schools, run in Afghanistan and inside the Pakistan border. “He started out as a simple Pashtun mullah with no world view or vision of a future Afghan state,” said Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid. “He started not wanting state power but only wanting to rid Afghanistan of warlords and has developed his world view with the help of Osama bin Laden.” In November 1994, his movement was strong enough to capture the southern city of Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, and it became clear that his drive had won the backing of Pakistan, itself eager to see peace returned to the state that borders its porous western border. By early 1995, Mullah Omar’s young and fanatical fighters were sweeping north through Afghanistan and captured Kabul in 1996 after several setbacks. He retrieved the sacred cloak of the Prophet Mohammad from a Kandahar shrine where it had lain in darkness for 60 years, emerged on to the roof of a building wrapped in the garment and was cheered by delighted mullahs assembled below him. The result of the meeting was an agreement to declare “jehad”, or holy war against President Burhanuddin Rabbani who was increasingly beleaguered in Kabul. Born in 1959 in the small village of Nodeh, near Kandahar, to a family of poor peasants, he lost his father when he was young and the job of fending for his family fell to him. A large man with a long, dark beard, he became a village mullah and opened his own Madrassa before joining the Mujahideen and fighting against the Soviet-established government from 1989 to 1992. Wounded four times, he lost his right eye. One of the rare people to see him described a scene reminiscent of the early Christian ascetics, who would live in caves and subject themselves to extreme privations in the belief they were getting closer to god. He appeared barefoot and was dressed in worn robes that hung down below his knees. There was an empty socket where his right eye had once been. “Now he (Omar) is more dependent on Bin Laden than the latter,” said Ahmed Rashid. “Bin Laden has provided fighters, funds, international contacts with broader Islamic movements worldwide, so he has become part of the inner circle last year,” he added.
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Hand over Laden to Islamic state: Taliban New York, September 19 A high-level delegation from Pakistan warned Kabul’s ruling Taliban militia on Tuesday that it must turn over Bin Laden or face a US-led military campaign. The USA believes Bin Laden, an exiled Saudi multimillionaire, orchestrated the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. A Taliban diplomat in Karachi insisted no decision had been taken on Bin Laden as Afghanistan had summoned a “Majlis-e-Shoora” (grand assembly) in Kabul to discuss whether or not Bin Laden should be handed over. “We are still waiting for some important personalities to reach Kabul for the meeting,” said the Taliban Consul-General in Karachi, Mr Rehmatullah Kakazada. The Pakistani team that went to Afghanistan to discuss the extradition of Bin Laden returned to Pakistan Tuesday night, officials said. There has been no formal word on the outcome of Pakistan’s last-ditch effort at resolving the situation through diplomatic efforts. But sources in Islamabad also said: “While the Taliban have rejected handing Osama bin Laden over to the US authorities, they may consider expelling him from Afghanistan to a third Muslim country”. “It seems that about 60 per cent or more of the Majlis-e-Shoora favours handing Bin Laden over to a third Islamic country,” a source said. The delegation to Afghanistan, headed by Pakistani intelligence chief General Mehmud Ahmad, was charged with delivering an ultimatum to Afghanistan’s Taliban leadership to hand over Bin Laden to Washington or face US military strikes. Dubai: Pakistan has vehemently denied the charge that it provided financial support to the Taliban militia in Afghanistan or had any influence over the fundamentalist regime in the neighbouring war-torn country. “It is absolutely baseless (to say that Pakistan provides financial support to the Taliban) as Pakistan has never been in a position to provide financial support to any country for that matter,’’ Pakistan’s Interior Minister Lt-Gen Moinuddin Haider (retd) told Khaleej Times. General Haider, who made a brief stopover in Dubai while returning home from an official visit to Kuwait, said Pakistan and Taliban had differed on many international issues in recent days, especially during the crisis over the Buddha statues in Afghanistan. General Haider, “even at that time, we tried to knock some sense into the mindset of the Afghan Government but we could not succeed and the whole thing resulted into further international isolation for the Afghan rulers”.
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Crisis may force Pak to CHOGM London, September 19 At a press conference launching his biennial report in London today, Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon told a questioner that if there was a demand by a majority of Commonwealth leaders for a Pakistan presence at Brisbane, that could be arranged. However, he said, such a move was not on the agenda at present, and the recent recommendation by the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) that Pakistan should remain suspended would not change. Referring to the issue of terrorism, Mr McKinnon commented that the Commonwealth, comprising 54 countries spread around the globe, was well placed to deal with the issue. “We are all vulnerable, and the only way to combat terrorism is by working together,” he declared. The report itself highlights the fight against poverty. It describes the growing gap between rich and poor as “the most powerful destabilising force and greatest threat to democracy” and insists that inequality within and between countries must be reversed, Mr McKinnon reaffirms the Commonwealth’s collective belief that “generous globalisation” should be the hallmark of the new century and says that the Commonwealth must demonstrate that it continues to offer “real and meaningful” benefits to its members. The report expresses grave concern that the benefits of globalisation are still not being shared equitably. In particular, it raises the problems faced by the so-called Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) and expresses the hope that the Commonwealth initiative in writing off these debts will continue. Mr McKinnon asks, “How can our debt-burdened members genuinely compete in a world economy when such a large proportion of their available funds goes to repaying debt?”.
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B’desh allows US use of airspace Dhaka, September 19 “Bangladesh will positively respond to the US request to combat terrorism arising out of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11,” Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser on Foreign Affairs Shafi Sami told reporters last night. Bangladesh would also allow planes to overfly its airspace and provide refuelling facilities to the aircraft of the multinational forces in case of a strike, he said. The decisions were taken at a special meeting of the advisory council, he said, adding that the modalities would be worked out.
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Omanis ‘not’
involved Muscat, September 19 “It has not been proved that the three Omanis, whose names have not been mentioned by the office of the Philippines presidency, have a link with the attacks in New York and Washington,” a spokesman said quoted by the ONA news agency. “These Omanis have been able to return home after visiting southeast Asia,” the spokesman said, stressing that “information published by media on the implication of the three Omanis is completely baseless.”
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Sodhi
murder: guilty to be charge-sheeted Washington, September 19 Frank Silva Roque, 42, has been formally charged with first-degree murder, four counts of attempted murder and three counts of drive-by shooting. He was held in lieu of a $-1 million bond. “Mr Roque will bear the full brunt of the law. Today, I have authorised the issuance of a formal complaint against Frank Silva Roque with the crimes listed in the criminal complaint,” Mr Romley said.
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W. Asia truce holds Amman, September 19 Arafat flew in from the Egyptian resort of
Sharm el-Sheikh where he held talks with Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak. Arafat and Mubarak gave no statements after the talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his army to halt attacks
and withdraw from Palestinian-ruled territory on Tuesday, hours after
Arafat reissued orders for a ceasefire. The latest move aimed at
ending a year of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed was driven by a US-led
campaign to forge an anti-terrorism alliance after deadly attacks in
New York and Washington last week left more than 5,000 people dead or
missing. Reuters |
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US blunder on
‘hijacker’ Beirut, September 19 Said Hussein Gharamallah al-Ghamdi has been in Tunis for the past nine months training with colleagues from state carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines, the London-based Asharq al-Awsat paper said.
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Five killed in Pak blast Islamabad, September 19 |
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