U.S. controls Afghan skies

10/10/2001

By G. ROBERT HILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON — Declaring "air supremacy" over Afghanistan, U.S. defense officials said Tuesday that allied forces were picking targets at will for airstrikes, day or night.

"The missions have been successful," President Bush said at the White House after conferring with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

At the Pentagon, though, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that four Afghan men associated with a United Nations mine-clearing operation might have been killed in one of the air raids near the Afghan capital of Kabul.

But he said the Pentagon had not been able to verify the deaths or determine whether the men might have been hit by a U.S. bomb or by Taliban ground fire.

"Nonetheless, we regret a loss of life," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "But as in any conflict, there will be unintended damage."

In Islamabad, Pakistan, U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker said the four men had been spending the night at their office near a radio transmission tower and anti-aircraft batteries that were U.S. targets Monday night.

The United Nations had pulled its staff from Afghanistan days ago, and the mine-clearing operation was suspended last week. But Afghans working for the United Nations or its contracted agencies remained behind.

Briefing reporters at the Pentagon on the third day of airstrikes against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban regime, Mr. Rumsfeld said the United States and its allies were making "every reasonable effort" to avoid civilian casualties as new targets emerge and some of those already bombed are hit again.

"These strikes, as I have said before, are part of a long and sustained campaign," the defense secretary said. "We will not stop until the international terrorist networks have been dealt with."

Most of the "high-value" Taliban military targets in Afghanistan — air defenses, airfields and command centers — already have been struck, he said.

"And with the success of previous raids, we believe we are now able to carry out strikes more or less around the clock, as we wish," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Allied forces will also continue to drop food and other humanitarian supplies from cargo planes flying over remote parts of the rugged Afghan countryside, Mr. Rumsfeld said. But some medical supplies were being held up because of logistical problems with the airdrops.

"We stand with the Afghan people who are suffering under the oppressive Taliban regime and who do not want their nation to be a base from which foreign terrorists wage war on the rest of the world," he said. "We thus have a common interest in ridding Afghanistan of this terrorist presence."

Later, in another videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network based in Qatar, a spokesman for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network praised the hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Bush remarks

"There's one way to shorten the campaign in Afghanistan," Mr. Bush said, "and that's for Osama bin Laden and his leadership to be turned over."

The president noted that three days of airstrikes by U.S. and British forces had cleared the airspace over Afghanistan, but he refused to discuss what military operations lie ahead.

"As to whether or not we will put troops on the ground, I'm not going to tell you," he said at the White House. "We will not share intelligence, nor will we talk about military plans that we may, or may not, have in the future."

Germany has pledged military resources in the new war on terrorism, Mr. Bush has said, and Mr. Schroeder acknowledged they had discussed the issue Tuesday at the White House. But he would not provide any details.

"It would be entirely unhelpful to spread this kind of information," the chancellor said.

Also at the White House on Tuesday, two new counter-terrorism experts joined the senior staff to oversee emerging national security and homeland defense issues.

Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, who investigated the 1996 attack on the U.S. military barracks at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, is the new deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism.

Richard Clarke, who has worked on counterterrorism efforts at the White House for more than a decade, is the new presidential adviser on cyberspace security.

Working on coalition

And at week's end, Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to head for Pakistan and India, then to China, where Mr. Bush plans to join him late next week in a long-scheduled economic meeting of world leaders.

Also traveling to Shanghai will be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was one of the first leaders to rally to Mr. Bush's side as he began forming an anti-terrorism coalition a month ago.

"It's a new attitude to our relationship," Mr. Bush said. "He understands the Cold War is over, and so do I, which provides great opportunity for not only America but Germany to work with Mr. Putin for our nations' interest, and his nation's interests."

At the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said the Bush administration was generally pleased with the international reaction to this week's allied airstrikes against the Taliban.

Even in the Muslim world, where there have been some violent protests, Mr. Boucher said, there generally has been a "very positive response."

"We do realize there are some demonstrations going on. This is not unexpected," he said. "But I would say that they've been somewhat limited in scope and that we have felt that there is not only government support in most of these countries, but that we also have a degree of popular support as well."

Staff writer David Jackson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.