Rumsfeld Says Pressure on Taliban is Cumulative and Growing
(Secretary of Defense reviews campaign against terrorism in TV interviews) (670) By Howard Cincotta Washington File Staff Writer Washington - The cumulative pressure on the al Qaeda terrorist network and its Taliban supporters is beginning to "change the center of gravity on the battlefield," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on November 11. Speaking on the television news programs "Face the Nation" and "Fox News Sunday," Rumsfeld said that there appears to be friction between the head of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Osama bin Laden about where to send supplies and deploy forces. "One gets the impression from scraps of information that, in fact, the conflict between them is getting resolved in favor of the foreign invaders, the al Qaeda, who are not Afghans at all," said the secretary. "We've been putting a lot of pressure on the al Qaeda organization and the Taliban, Rumsfeld said. "Pressure in terms of freezing bank accounts, pressure in terms of arresting people in other countries. Pressure by special forces activities around the country in Afghanistan, especially pressure from the air. We're supplying the ammunition and food and winter gear to the Northern Alliance and to some of the southern tribes." Secretary Rumsfeld said that, although the threat of a Taliban counterattack remains, the Northern Alliance has taken control of the Mazar-i-Sharif area and is continuing to advance. "I would say that the plan - the strategy is in place," he said. "It's going forward." On the question of the capital, Kabul, Secretary Rumsfeld said that the city should be liberated from al Qaeda and the Taliban in a way that signals that the new leadership would be broadly based and representative of all the major ethnic groups in the country. "Whenever Kabul is occupied," Rumsfeld say, "it [should] be occupied in a way that tells the Pashtun tribes in the south that they are going to have a voice in this whole process." Rumsfeld warned, however, that the political process is complicated and uncertain, and while the United States has made its views known, the decision on when and how to move toward Kabul is one that the Northern Alliance will make. A related challenge, the secretary added, will be the need to provide humanitarian assistance to the city. "One would hope that at the right moment we're going to be able to provide the kind of food and medical assistance that those people are going to need," he said. Asked about the possibility that bin Laden possesses weapons of mass destruction, Secretary Rumsfeld said that the al Qaeda organization has been actively seeking chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons for years. Bin Laden may well possess some types of biological and chemical weapons, Rumsfeld said. However, it is unlikely that he possesses a nuclear weapon, the secretary added. Asked about statements of Iranian President Khatami at the United Nations condemning terrorism, Secretary Rumsfeld said, "I find these comments encouraging." He noted that, as country bordering Afghanistan, Iran has a legitimate interest in what happens there. In some cases, Rumsfeld added, U.S. and Iranian personnel are working with the same elements inside Afghanistan. In the overall war against terrorism, Rumsfeld warned, "We are in the very early period. It is a long process. It involves terrorist networks in a number of countries, and we have to root them out. The nexus between terrorist networks and weapons of mass destruction presents a problem so serious for us that we have to address it." Reflecting on impact of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Secretary Rumsfeld said, "I think that this event has been so significant for the world that you're going to see new relationships coming out all across the globe on every continent. When I travel around and talk to people, they have a different perspective, a different set of priorities. And what we need to do is to deal with this problem to be sure, but also to be thinking out 5, 10 years." (Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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