Return-Path: <sentto-279987-2375-1001515121-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com> Delivered-To: fc@all.net Received: from 204.181.12.215 by localhost with POP3 (fetchmail-5.1.0) for fc@localhost (single-drop); Wed, 26 Sep 2001 07:41:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 17468 invoked by uid 510); 26 Sep 2001 14:38:59 -0000 Received: from n15.groups.yahoo.com (216.115.96.65) by 204.181.12.215 with SMTP; 26 Sep 2001 14:38:59 -0000 X-eGroups-Return: sentto-279987-2375-1001515121-fc=all.net@returns.onelist.com Received: from [10.1.4.55] by ml.egroups.com with NNFMP; 26 Sep 2001 14:38:41 -0000 X-Sender: fc@big.all.net X-Apparently-To: iwar@onelist.com Received: (EGP: mail-7_3_2_2); 26 Sep 2001 14:38:40 -0000 Received: (qmail 8210 invoked from network); 26 Sep 2001 14:38:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by l9.egroups.com with QMQP; 26 Sep 2001 14:38:40 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO big.all.net) (65.0.156.78) by mta1 with SMTP; 26 Sep 2001 14:38:39 -0000 Received: (from fc@localhost) by big.all.net (8.9.3/8.7.3) id HAA19269 for iwar@onelist.com; Wed, 26 Sep 2001 07:38:39 -0700 Message-Id: <200109261438.HAA19269@big.all.net> To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List) Organization: I'm not allowed to say X-Mailer: don't even ask X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL1] From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net> Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list iwar@yahoogroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:iwar-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com> Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 07:38:39 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com Subject: [iwar] [fc:Afghans.Burn.Empty.U.S..Embassy.in.Kabul.U.N..Says] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Afghans Burn Empty U.S. Embassy in Kabul U.N. Says By Tahir Ikram and Michael Conlon Reuters ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Sept. 26) - Protesters in Afghanistan's capital Kabul set fire to the deserted U.S. embassy on Wednesday after a fresh ultimatum to the ruling Taliban from President Bush's anti-terror coalition. But on the borders of Afghanistan, the United Nations and others in the humanitarian community focused on the plight of civilians there and prepared for an exodus of up to 1.5 million frightened and hungry refugees. Britain, Bush's staunchest ally, told the Taliban on Tuesday that the coalition would treat them as its enemy if they did not hand over Washington's chief suspect in the Sept. 11 suicide hijacking attacks on New York and Washington. Witnesses in Kabul said tens of thousands of Afghans turned out to denounce any attack over the Taliban's failure to hand over Saudi-born Muslim militant Osama bin Laden. They sacked and set fire to the U.S. embassy, which Washington abandoned in 1989. ''Death to Bush,'' the protesters, mostly government officials and students, shouted. ''We will support Islam and bin Laden.'' The protesters burnt an effigy of Bush, ripped apart a U.S. flag and hurled stones at the gates and offices of the embassy before setting it alight. War and hunger have already made Afghans the world's largest refugee population -- a tally of about 3.7 million to date. Voices across the Islamic world have urged caution, the latest being the United Arab Emirates, until last Saturday one of just three countries to recognize the Taliban government. ''I call on the United States to pause for reflection and give a chance to diplomacy and all legal means before it resorts to military action,'' UAE Defense Minister Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum said in a statement on Wednesday. ''The international community must expect a human catastrophe whose features have already started to emerge in the waves of Afghan refugees flooding into Pakistan,'' he added. COALITION ULTIMATUM Neighbor Pakistan, the only country recognizing the Taliban after Saudi Arabia broke ties on Tuesday, said it had no plan to open its borders to new arrivals, but did not rule out the idea. ''Within Afghanistan, if the situation becomes untenable, or if there is an attack, purely for humanitarian reasons, we will contemplate that,'' Abbas Sarfraz, its minister for the frontier regions, told a news conference. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, firing the salvo in what is still a war of words on Tuesday, extended the coalition demand on bin Laden to members of other groups trained in Afghanistan. ''Military conflict there will be unless the Taliban change and respond to the ultimatum,'' Blair told a London news briefing. ''It's not simply a question of them (the Taliban) yielding up bin Laden, it is a question of them making sure that all those responsible for terrorism are yielded up,'' he added. Little has filtered out about military preparations for what Washington has renamed ''Operation Enduring Freedom'' -- critics of the initial tag, ''Infinite Justice,'' noted that for Muslims only God, or Allah, can mete out infinite justice. But the Pentagon has hinted that a major land attack on Afghanistan may not be in the offing. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke on Tuesday of an antiseptic war. ''There is not going to be a D-Day, as such,'' he told a news conference at the Pentagon, itself a target in the September 11 attacks which killed up to 7,000 people. ''The truth is this is not about revenge. It's not about retaliation. This is about self-defense,'' Rumsfeld said. ''The United States of America knows that the only way we can defend against terrorism is by taking the fight to the terrorists.'' The Taliban, who espouse a purist form of Islam, are more isolated than any government in Afghanistan has been. Pakistan, which has pledged full cooperation with the coalition, and the Taliban embassy in its capital Islamabad remain their only diplomatic link with the outside world. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who has been sheltering bin Laden in the face of U.S. extradition demands after earlier attacks on U.S. targets around the world, urged the American people to question the motives of their government. ''You should know whatever incidents and sorrow you suffer ... are a result of the erroneous policies of your government,'' he said in a statement faxed from his headquarters in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. SECURITY VERSUS CIVIL LIBERTIES But his comments, like Taliban assertions that they cannot find bin Laden, cut little ice in the United States. As workers in New York removed the last shattered remnants of the walls that once sheathed the gleaming twin-tower World Trade Center, Bush said that those responsible for the attacks ''may be planning further acts'' within the United States. Police in Britain said that three men arrested in the central England city of Leicester on terrorism charges had been linked with plans to launch a wave of attacks in France and Belgium. Police in Spain said they had arrested six members of a group with suspected links to bin Laden. Bush, enjoying 90-percent approval ratings in the opinion polls for his handling of the crisis, pressed for expanded powers to detain people in a home-front war against terrorism. He urged Congress to give law enforcement officers expanded powers to tap telephones, conduct searches, seize assets and detain suspected terrorists. ''Now that we're at war we ought to give the FBI tools to track down terrorists,'' he said at FBI headquarters. On the fiscal front, the House of Representatives approved a $344 billion defense spending bill for 2002 that shifts some missile defense funds into antiterrorism programs. The White House told fellow Republicans it wants its package of antiterrorism legislation passed by the end of next week. But Bush's proposals have drawn a firestorm of criticism from civil liberties groups. Civil liberties groups in Europe expressed similar concerns about hard-won European laws on protecting personal data. RISK OF ISLAMIC BACKLASH On the diplomatic front, a senior U.S. official said that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz would on Wednesday outline steps NATO allies could take in the war on terrorism -- adding that military help was ''not the primary piece.'' The United States, which has repeatedly urged Moscow to investigate what it calls credible reports of atrocities by Russian forces fighting Muslim separatists in Chechnya, indicated support for Russian President Vladimir Putin on his home front. Putin has said Moscow will step up arms supplies to opponents of the Taliban. Though Putin kept his options open and ruled out direct Russian military involvement, he has said Moscow will not stop Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and other Russian allies in Central Asia allowing aerodromes to be used for humanitarian flights. ''We believe that President Putin made a sincere proposal to the Chechen side,'' a senior State Department official said, expressing the hope that the Chechen separatists would play their part in working for lasting peace in the Caucasus. Elsewhere, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that Bush would attend the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai on October 20 and 21, but had put off stops in Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul until ''circumstances permit.'' China, which has backed the idea of a war on terrorism but wants the U.N. Security Council involved and any action based on evidence, said on Wednesday that it understood the decision. Elsewhere, U.S. and British insistence that war against terrorism is not war against Islam may have fallen on deaf ears. Cries of jihad, or holy war, from militants in different corners of the Muslim world highlighted the ever-present risk of a violent backlash among the world's billion Muslims. ------------------------ Yahoo! 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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:50 PDT