WASHINGTON - World leaders at the United Nations expressed support, at times tinged with scepticism, as United States President George W. Bush called them to join forces against those responsible for the September 11 carnage at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"As we meet, the terrorists are planning more murder, perhaps in my country or perhaps in yours," Bush told 48 Presidents and Prime Ministers and 114 Foreign Ministers in his first appearance before the UN General Assembly.
"In this war of terror, each of us must answer for what we have done or what we have left undone," said a spirited Bush, punctuating his words now and then with a clenched fist.
Terror groups were seeking nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and would not hesitate to use them, Bush said.
"These same terrorists are searching for weapons of mass destruction, the tools to turn their hatred into holocausts," he said, speaking a few miles from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. "This threat cannot be ignored, this threat cannot be appeased ... Civilisation itself is threatened."
First reactions to Bush's speech were supportive, but many leaders expressed uneasiness about the toll US air strikes were taking on the shattered Afghan people.
Iran's President Mohammed Khatami cautioned against "unilateral practices stemming from pride and rage", while all-important US ally Pakistan advised Washington to develop an alternative strategy if the military option faltered.
"It is also essential that a fallback political strategy be evolved which could attain the same objective as being sought through military application," said Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf.
European Union officials said they saw no reason to ease strikes on the Taleban rulers of Afghanistan, who are shielding key terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden.
"The real danger today would be for us to take the easy way out and say that the United States strikes are of no use," said Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Louis Michel, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
Latin American leaders offered full support for Bush but urged more attention to the perceived roots of extremism: poverty and hunger.
"Unequal distribution causes frustration and despair ... and generates the conditions that give rise to conflicts and clashes where different types of fundamentalism are at work," said Argentina's President Fernando de la Rua.
- REUTERS
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US battlecry wins uneasy UN backing
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