WASHINGTON/KABUL - The United States this morning widened its efforts to stir up a revolt in Afghanistan, sending elite commandos into the south of the country, but the ruling Taleban vowed to shield Osama bin Laden and said its defences remained strong.
On the US home front, officials stepped up efforts to calm public anxiety about the spread of anthrax, even as one more case was confirmed at the New York Post newspaper and fears rippled around the world. On the 13th day of non-stop air strikes on Taleban troops and bin Laden's al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 5,400 on US soil, the insertion of the first ground troops marked a new phase in the offensive.
"It is at the very, very, very earliest stage," one defence official said.
The troops were in the south of the country, which borders Pakistan, to contact tribal factions opposed to the Taleban and boost CIA efforts to encourage ethnic Pashtun leaders to formally break away from the Taleban, also mainly Pashtun.
The Taleban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef repeated on Friday that his government would not surrender bin Laden and his cohorts to the United States, as President Bush has demanded.
"The issue of Osama has not changed. It is a matter of our faith, we might as well change our faith," he said, dismissing US reports that the Taleban defences had been degraded.
A coalition of mostly ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, who have been fighting the Taleban for years, has already stepped up its attacks in the north since the US raids started on Oct. 7
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting the US airbase in Missouri from which B-2 stealth bombers are making marathon round-trip bombing raids, Rumsfeld said: "The military role will be over there when the Taleban and the al Qaeda are gone. That's what this is about."
Rumsfeld said one goal was to stir up Afghans disenchanted with the fundamentalist, rigorous form of Islam practiced by the Taleban.
"It is going to be a lot easier in my view to try to persuade a number of them to oppose Taleban and to oppose al Qaeda" than it would be for the U.S.-led coalition to defeat these groups directly, he said.
Zaeef acknowledged that Taleban communications had been badly damaged and there had been some military casualties after 12 days of US air strikes.
But he insisted the hard-line movement's forces remained united and committed and repeated that while US planes might control the skies, they would meet their match on the ground.
"We have had some casualties but remain strong. If fighting starts on the ground, then let us see what will happen," Zaeef said.
The Taleban have recently tried to reach out to the Northern Alliance to make common cause against the United States. But opposition leaders said they had turned down the proposal after a meeting with Taleban officials near Kabul.
Since Sept. 11 fears have spread of fresh attacks involving anthrax, a potentially lethal germ warfare agent that has turned up in Florida, Washington, New York and New Jersey.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said the strains of anthrax sent through the mail to NBC News in New York, a Florida tabloid publishing house and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's office in Washington were "indistinguishable," suggesting they may have all come from the same source and been mailed by the same person or persons.
Additionally, the bacteria had not been chemically coated, ground smaller or genetically altered to make them more deadly and easier to spread.
"These strains have not been weaponised," Ridge said.
Bush has said the United States had yet to make a link between anthrax attacks in America and bin Laden's network but added, "I wouldn't put it past them."
Bush, in Shanghai for a summit of Asian and Pacific nations, met Chinese President Jiang Zemin and said the two nations stood side by side in the war against terrorism.
"We have a common understanding of the magnitude of the threat posed by international terrorism," he said at a joint news conference after the meeting.
Jiang said he had told Bush that "we are opposed to terrorism of all forms." But he made clear China was not happy with civilian deaths reported from the bombing raids. China was deeply upset by the US bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the NATO effort against Yugoslavia in 1999.
The United States is trying to hold together a broad international coalition for its war on terrorism. But the unity is being strained by violence in the Middle East and the Indian state of Kashmir.
In the Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian violence surged and seven people were killed in the bloody aftermath of the assassination of a far-right Israeli Cabinet minister.
The bloodshed and threats by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of tougher retribution could threaten US efforts to boost Arab and Muslim support for its own Afghan offensive.
However, in the sub-continent, a potential flashpoint on the doorstep of Afghanistan, India said it would not go in "hot pursuit" of Islamic guerrillas fighting its rule in Kashmir across the military control line with Pakistan.
In Afghanistan, a senior commander of the Northern Alliance, which has been fighting the Taleban for years, said he hoped to encircle the strategic Taleban-held city of Mazar-i-Sharif within a few days.
Ustad Attah, one of three commanders trying to recapture the strategic northern town, said eight US personnel, apparently on an intelligence or reconnaissance mission, had been with fellow opposition commander General Abdul Rashid Dostum for several days.
According to a pro-Taleban Islamic religious party leader in Pakistan, the government was allowing US forces to use a third air field, at Dalbandin, a small town in southwestern Baluchistan province bordering Afghanistan.
The United States deployed four slow-moving EC-130E "Commando Solo" psychological operations aircraft, broadcasting in local Afghan dialects the message that Afghans could expect to see US troops on the ground.
"Attention. People of Afghanistan, United States forces will be moving through your area," one message said, adding that the United States wished no harm on ordinary Afghans.
"Please, for your own safety, stay off bridges and roadways, and do not interfere with our troops or military operations," said another.
In New York, federal prosecutors charged a man with two counts of lying to a grand jury about his relationship with two alleged hijackers, the first time charges against someone have been made public in the city since the Sept. 11 attack.
The Manhattan US Attorney's office said in a complaint filed in federal court that Osama Awadallah made false statements to the grand jury about his relationship with two of the alleged hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, killing 189 people.
- REUTERS
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