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Wednesday,
September 26, 2001, Chandigarh, India  
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Attack
plan bid to install pro-US govt: Omar
Over
30,000 Afghans face starvation
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Pak
reopens border
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, right, shakes hands with British Foreign
Minister Jack Straw during an official meeting in
Tehran on Tuesday. Straw is the first British Foreign Minister to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Straw arrived in Tehran on Monday.
— AP/PTI photo
This recent photo shows Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and a man the US Attorney's office identified as Muhammad Atef.
— Reuters photo
USA
cautioned on arrest of aliens 2
Central Asian states to give air corridors
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Attack plan bid to install pro-US govt:
Omar Islamabad, September 25 “What they want in Afghanistan is that they want to end Islamic system in Afghanistan, create chaos and install a pro-American government here” Radio Kabul quoted him as saying today. Omar, considered to be spiritual head of the Taliban regime, said the USA cannot escape the present crisis by killing him or Laden and if the Americans want to root out terrorism, they should withdraw their forces from the Gulf and adopt an impartial role in finding a solution to the Palestine question. He said by attacking Afghanistan, the USA would itself be committing terrorism, adding Americans would burn themselves and others by imposing war. Ian Traynor adds from Denau, Uzbekistan On the fifth floor Wahidullah, a 30-year-old ethnic Tajik, comforted his two young children and looked on fearfully as the building was shaken by the howling and shrieking of mothers and sisters. The gunmen moved through the first few floors of the block, seizing all males aged between 18 and 30 and dragging them away, the hostages were told, to fight America. “That was when I decided to leave. I thought they were going to take me too,’’ said Wahidullah, after a 12-hour trek with his family out of Kabul to the other side of the lines in Afghanistan’s civil war. Caked in dust, his 18-month-old sobbing in the open back of the jeep carrying 14 people, Wahidullah recounted how the Taliban fighters turned up in 50 vehicles and started hauling men from their beds. One was bound and gagged. Taliban militias have been staging night raids on the district’s homes, dragging the menfolk away to fight for them on the frontline, to get ready to defend the city against US attacks, to be thrown into jail, or to be held as hostages and perhaps human shields. “Four days ago they began to hold people hostage,” explained Mohamad Hossain (30) who arrived in the village of Denau yesterday with his wife, five children, and niece. “They jail people, then keep them as hostages, because they have many soldiers captive and want to exchange them.” The traumatised refugees all told similar tales of panic in the streets of Kabul, about how the marauders grabbed the men and looted the flats. Around 100 of the fugitives came through yesterday, braving brigands and bombs, and carrying babies on foot for hours across no man’s land before being fleeced by “taxi drivers” waiting on the other side to pack them into estate cars and ferry them to relatives in the Panjsheer Valley opposition stronghold. The Taliban defence minister in Kabul announced yesterday that he was mobilising 300,000 men to defend Afghanistan against feared attacks. “In view of the current conditions 300,000 well-experienced and equipped men have been stationed in the centre [of the country], and at other significant areas, in addition to its former detachments,’’ Mullah Obaidullah said. “Hundreds of thousands of others have showed their readiness to participate in a jihad against foreign invaders. Enrolment is going on” The Tajiks are fleeing because the ethnic issue is also a major factor in the civil war, with the Taliban almost completely Pushtu, while the Northern Alliance opposition is Tajik-dominated. With 38 per cent the Pushtus are the biggest nationality in Afghanistan, while the Tajiks are the second biggest at 25 per cent. For the first time in seven years of harsh Taliban rule, the Tajiks are being dragooned into the Pashtu army and many are opting to flee if they can. One man coming out of Kabul yesterday said the Taliban had just rounded up 300 males of the Hazara minority.
PTI, The Guardian (London) |
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Over 30,000 Afghans face starvation Islamabad, September 25 Conducted in July-August this year, the food survey results show that 1.6 million persons will run out of food by December in some provinces of the war and drought-hit country, reported SADA news agency. The epicentre of the crisis lies in the North Western district because of three-year drought in the area. The WFP spokesman, Mr Khaled Mansour, said on Monday that the agency delivered food in these areas two weeks ago and would continue sending more to those accessible. He admitted that the WFP’s food supplies were now limited to some 1 million persons after the tragic happenings of September 11 whereas prior to that over 4 million persons used to get food from the UN body. Mr Khaled said, “We are operating under extremely difficult circumstances due to lack of commercial trucks and absence of many aid workers. Since September 11, the WFP has, however, distributed 2,500 tonnes of food to people.” About food stock, he said, “We still have enough stocks inside the country to continue full normal operation for more than three weeks, but due to current conditions we are unable to reach people as we used to.” The WFP has reasonably good stocks around Afghanistan, which can be moved within 12 hours, if conditions permit, from warehouses in Balochistan and NWFP (North West Frontier Province), Mr Khaled said. To a question about provision of food through Afghan authorities in case of a worsening of crisis, Mr Khaled said, “The WFP does not provide food to soldiers. We would try our best to reach the most needy civilians in case of war.” Mr Peter Kessler, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told mediapersons on Monday that the agency would start shifting Afghan refugees from the Chaman border to a new camp, about 15 km from the border, in Balochistan. Meanwhile, UNHCR resident representative held a meeting with the Balochistan Governor in which both agreed to shift these exposed refugees to a new camp where adequate supplies for up to 20,000 persons were available. Mr Kessler said, “The number of Afghans crossing into Pakistan is in lower thousands which is manageable.” As a precautionary measure, the refugee agency has got 20,000 tents besides stand by arrangement in its warehouse in Copenhagen, he explained. The UNHCR spokesman said Pakistan and Iran were bracing for the largest humanitarian operation the UN had ever conducted in the world.
IANS |
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Pak
reopens border Quetta, September 25 “Yes, formally the border opened this morning at Chaman and Afghan families waiting in Weesh have started entering Pakistan,” a senior immigration officer at the border said on telephone. The border was closed last week to all Afghans without valid visas.
Reuters |
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UK says Israeli PM Sharon to meet Straw London, September 25 A spokeswoman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he and Sharon had spoken for 15 minutes by telephone on Tuesday morning. She said Sharon and Straw would meet on Wednesday. "The prime minister...warmly welcomed the fact that Jack Straw will be meeting Sharon tomorrow, when he would be discussing the question of terrorism in the light of his visit to Iran and other neighbouring countries," she said. Sharon's office had said earlier on Tuesday he would not meet Straw because of his "anti-Israeli comments". But Blair's spokeswoman described his talks with Sharon as "genuinely warm". "Prime Minister Sharon said he supported the strong stand that
the prime minister was taking on international terrorism and in
building the international coalition," she said. Reuters |
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Atta emerges key player in probe Washington, September 25 Authorities believe the man who coordinated the multiple attacks of September 11 is still at large, and experts say he is likely a member of Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network. A man with greying hair — older than the presumed hijackers, who ranged in age from 21 to 40 — was seen visiting the suspects in the months leading up to the attacks in at least two US states, according to witnesses. Federal agents are working to analyse data gathered over the past 13 days on Mohammed Atta, believed to have piloted the airplane which destroyed the north tower of the World Trade Center. Atta, (33), is emerging more and more clearly as key player in the operation, according to a government source cited yesterday in Newsweek. Atta visited a small single-runway airport in Belle Glade, Florida, inquiring about crop dusters, The Washington Post reported. FBI investigators suspect Atta and his accomplices were also planning to use the small agricultural planes for a chemical attack on a US target. The interest in Atta is not limited to the USA, Anne Greaves, a British pilot who trained alongside Atta, told the FBI and the Scotland Yard that he posed as an Arab prince surrounded by bodyguards. According to German intelligence, Atta was in Germany between January and May, 2000. While there he visited pharmacies and purchased chemicals that could be used to make explosives, the German magazine Focus reported. He was in Spain from July 7 to 19, and spent 24 hours in Prague, investigators say. Investigators have also identified the suspected treasurer of the September 11 attacks, Mustafa Ahmed, living in the UAE, Newsweek reported. Atta sent him a package from Hollywood, Florida, the magazine said. Its contents are not yet known but investigators believe the hijackers may have sent small sums of money. Among some 80 suspects detained by the FBI is Zaccaria Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who had a manual on piloting crop-dusters among his possessions. Moussaoui was arrested in Minnesota in August.
AFP |
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Suspect wanted to buy cropduster plane? Washington, September 25 Employees told the man that the department did not offer such loans and referred him to a local private lender, according to a bank president whose security chief was briefed by the FBI, The Post reported. It appears the man did visit that lender and made further inquiries about a cropduster loan, but there is no record that he applied for one.
DPA |
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Biological
attacks feared Washington, September 25 “We must prepare for the possibility that people are deliberately harmed with biological or chemical agents,” Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland told a meeting of western hemisphere Health Ministers here yesterday. Earlier, Attorney-General John Ashcroft told a congressional hearing that Mohamed Atta “was acquiring knowledge of crop-dusting aircraft prior to the attack of September 11.”
AP |
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USA
cautioned on arrest of
aliens New York, September 25 The administration’s move to introduce new rules on detention that would allow immigrants to be held indefinitely during a national emergency has caused grave concern among human and civil rights groups as well as immigrant communities, especially those of South Asian and Middle Eastern origin. The Justice Department has sent a “broad package” of anti-terrorism legislation that would empower it to arrest immigrants suspected of terrorism, speed up deportation and curtail court appeals. Hours after the Justice Department’s announcement that it wanted changes in the Mobilisation Against Terrorism Act, scores of minority rights and civil liberties groups engaged in efforts to convince lawmakers to avoid taking any legislative step in haste. “There has been a rush to change our nation’s laws without any meaningful opportunity for deliberation or debate on how either our security or our freedom would be affected,” noted Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, the nation’s oldest civil rights group. “This action is an affront to the millions of law-abiding immigrants as well as the millions of others who are sons and daughters of immigrants,” he said. According to the ACLU, there are about 6.5 million Muslims and about 3.5 million people of West Asian descent in the USA. The ACLU has joined a broad coalition of 150 groups from across the political, ethnic, religious and racial spectrums to defend the constitutional rights that they believe are under attack by the Bush administration.
IANS |
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2 Central Asian states to give air corridors Bishkek, September 25 Mr Akayev told reporters that the decision had been made after consultation with five other former Soviet republics comprising a Collective Security Pact. He did not specify whether the planes would be for military or only humanitarian use. Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country dominates the Collective Security Pact, said yesterday that Moscow would grant air corridors only for humanitarian flights. Another member of the pact, Kazakhstan, has offered strategically vital aerodromes and bases for a potential strike on Afghanistan. Separately Turkmenistan, which has a short strip of border with Afghanistan, said today, it would offer air corridors for humanitarian flights to the crisis area. The Turkmen President said the decision was made after a telephone conversation with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Reuters |
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