Pakistan gets U.S. evidence on bin Laden

10/04/2001

By Gregg Jones
The Dallas Morning News

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistani officials said Wednesday that they were reviewing additional evidence that the United States says links Osama bin Laden to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

The presentation of evidence to Pakistan's military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, was seen by diplomats and other analysts as a key step ahead of expected military strikes on Afghanistan's radical Taliban regime. Pakistan is a crucial ally in any campaign against the Taliban because of its common border with Afghanistan and intimate knowledge of the regime.

"Today we received some more material which is being studied ... with reference to the question of both the evidence and the status of investigations," said Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammad Khan. "It is being studied by the concerned people."

Taliban leaders have defiantly rejected U.S. demands to surrender Mr. bin Laden, described by U.S. officials as the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks. The Taliban has acknowledged that the Saudi-born militant is under its protection.

A delegation of Pakistani clerics from four pro-Taliban religious parties on Wednesday canceled a planned trip to Afghanistan to meet with the supreme Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar. The clerics said they had decided not to travel to the Taliban spiritual capital of Kandahar because efforts to avert U.S. military attacks seemed futile.

President Bush has rejected Taliban calls for negotiations and the Afghan regime's request for evidence proving the involvement of Mr. bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization in the U.S. attacks. Mr. Bush has said repeatedly that the Taliban must unconditionally surrender Mr. bin Laden and his lieutenants or face the consequences.

As U.S. military forces converged on the region, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began a swing through the Middle East and Central Asia on Wednesday to "talk about the campaign against terrorism and ... have consultations at the highest levels," a spokeswoman said. His first stop was Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to allow U.S. forces to use a Saudi command center in any military action against Afghanistan.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also scheduled to visit Oman, Egypt, and the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan.

Meanwhile, Pakistani officials announced that British Prime Minister Tony Blair was planning a visit to Pakistan on Friday, presumably to shore up support for the U.S.-led military response.

Inside Afghanistan, the first convoys of badly needed U.N. food aid reached Kabul on Wednesday as international relief groups desperately tried to head off a humanitarian catastrophe as winter approaches.

The threat of U.S. military strikes has caused hundreds of thousands of Afghans to flee their homes and added to the suffering caused by three years of drought and two decades of war.

With military action against Afghanistan appearing inevitable, Taliban officials on Wednesday continued efforts to rally its forces. But the regime faces a murky political situation in the 90 percent of Afghanistan it controls, and opponents have been reinvigorated by pledges of support from the United States and other countries.

In the small portion of northern Afghanistan held by an armed opposition coalition, the Northern Alliance's foreign minister, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, said his group had been engaged in talks with U.S. officials and was receiving an infusion of military support from Russia and Iran.

"I have met American officials face to face in the past several days," Dr. Abdullah told reporters in the Northern Alliance stronghold of Jabal-us-Saraj, 40 miles from the Afghan capital of Kabul. "In the immediate term, it is coordination of efforts in order to eradicate terrorism from Afghanistan."

The Taliban supporters and their opponents comprise a complicated patchwork of tribal leaders and ethnic warlords, many of whom have changed allegiances repeatedly during the last two decades of war and political conflict in the Central Asian nation.

The Northern Alliance and Afghanistan's exiled king, Zahir Shah, said on Monday, they have agreed to forge a united front in efforts to topple the Taliban and install a new government.