Tuesday, October 2, 2001

Pakistan president expects U.S. attack
By Laura King
Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — All but giving up on efforts to mediate the standoff over Osama bin Laden, Pakistan’s president said Monday a U.S. military strike against Afghanistan appears likely, and the Taliban’s days are probably numbered.

That blunt assessment by Gen. Pervez Musharraf came as the first relief convoy since the start of the crisis reached Afghanistan’s hungry capital, Kabul, and Taliban forces reported gains in the hit-and-run warfare being waged with opposition fighters across Afghanistan’s mountainous north.

The Taliban were also bolstering their garrison in the Afghan capital. More than 6,500 fresh troops have arrived in recent days, according to Taliban officials in Kabul.

Pakistan has been in a quandary ever since the Sept. 11 terror attacks that tore through a wing of the Pentagon and toppled the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

It does not want to see its ally, the United States, do battle with the Taliban, the austere Islamic movement that rules next-door Afghanistan with a heavy hand but has brought a measure of stability to the war-battered country. Pakistan is only government in the world to recognize the Taliban as Afghanistan’s legitimate rulers.

After suspicion in the suicide hijackings focused on bin Laden, Pakistan agreed to lend its full support to the United States in the war on terror.

But it made repeated efforts to persuade the Taliban to take steps to stave off an American retaliatory strike — namely by surrendering bin Laden, their “guest” of the past five years. During that time, bin Laden made Afghanistan the field headquarters for a wide-ranging terror network known as al-Qaida, or “the base.”

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., Musharraf acknowledged Pakistan had nothing to show for its diplomatic campaign.

“We were interacting with them (the Taliban) so that moderation could take place and maybe this kind of action is averted,” he said. “But it appears because of the stand that the Taliban have taken, that confrontation will take place.”

The president said it now “appears that the United States will take action in Afghanistan, and we have conveyed this to the Taliban.” Asked if the Taliban’s days were numbered, he replied: “It appears so.”

Pakistan said it would keep trying, even though it saw almost no chance of getting the Taliban to relent.

“Whatever dim hopes are left, possibilities exist,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan. “We will remain engaged with the Taliban.”

He said Pakistan had no knowledge about U.S. operational plans for any strike.

The Taliban, meanwhile, were trying to woo tribal leaders inside Afghanistan, in an apparent attempt to counter support for the country’s exiled former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah. The 86-year-old ex-monarch has been living quietly in exile since 1973, and the Taliban have threatened to kill him if he returns.

On Monday, the former king and an alliance of opposition groups in northern Afghanistan agreed to convene an emergency council of tribal and military leaders as a first step toward forming a new system of government of Afghanistan. The Taliban, meanwhile, announced a power-sharing arrangement with tribes in three key southern provinces, according to the Islamabad-based Afghan Islamic Press.

The report quoted a Taliban spokesman, Rehmat A. Wahidyar, as saying tribal representatives would be given posts in provincial governments of Khost, Paktia and Paktika. Khost was the target of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles during an unsuccessful attempt in destroy bin Laden training camps in 1998.

Across a swath of northern Afghanistan, fierce but scattered fighting persisted between the opposition alliance and Taliban troops. Taliban officials quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press said their troops had retaken the district of Qadis in northeastern Bagdis province — whose capture the rebels had reported only a day earlier.

Russia said last week it would step up its support for the opposition, and larger-than-usual shipments of Russian military equipment have been arriving in recent days in Dushanbe, the capital of Afghanistan’s northern neighbor Tajikistan.

Russia has been supplying the opposition for the past several years and also has 25,000 troops of its own stationed in Tajikistan to help guard the border with Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, the first World Food Program convoy since the Sept. 11 attacks arrived Monday after a grueling journey over rough, rutted roads. The hungry were waiting.

WFP spokesman Michael Huggins told reporters the cargo of wheat was “distributed immediately among the people who needed it.” With the harsh Afghan winter coming on within six weeks, more than 6 million people are expected to need U.N. food aid this winter, he said.

Help for what could become a flood of refugees was also moving into high gear.

Yusuf Hassan, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said work would begin Tuesday on the first camp for 10,000 new refugees, near the frontier city of Peshawar. Sites for other camps were being worked out with Pakistani officials, he said.

Also Monday, Kenzo Oshima, U.N. undersecretary for humanitarian affairs, came to the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. He said he understood Pakistan’s fears that with 2 million Afghan refugees already within its borders, the country cannot afford to shelter more.