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U.S. Advances Plans to Retaliate for Attacks, Includes Pakistan
WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (News Agencies) - The United States on Saturday overcame a key hurdle in plans to retaliate for this week's deadly attacks, winning a critical pledge of support from Pakistan, as it began the somber business of burying its dead.
President George W. Bush vowed a "sweeping, sustained" operation to hunt down terrorists and for the first time named Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden as "a prime suspect" in attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and left a gaping hole in the Pentagon outside Washington.
Plans for the much-anticipated U.S. retaliation in the aftermath of Tuesday's operation, which left more than 5,000 people dead or missing, received support Saturday when Pakistan agreed to back the United States.
In Washington's cross hairs is Pakistan's neighbor Afghanistan, and its Taliban regime, accused here of harboring bin Laden and fellow anti-U.S. elements.
As Federal authorities stepped up an investigation into what they suspect could be a global terror network, Justice Department officials said 25 people had either been arrested or detained in connection with the attacks.
New York City meanwhile, sent out its strongest signal yet that it was at last ready to get back to work, announcing that its fabled stock exchange would reopen on Monday.
But there was nevertheless no escaping the horror that rocked the city when two fully fueled hijacked airliners ploughed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Rescuers, having so far pulled just 152 bodies from the wreckage, continued combing through the mangled remains of the two buildings but failed to find any survivors. Authorities say 4,972 people are still listed as missing in New York as are 125 at the Pentagon.
New York was in fact a tale of two cities Saturday: downtown saw New York Stock Exchange officials giving their systems a test run ahead of Monday's bell while away from lower Manhattan federal, state and local dignitaries attended funeral services for some of the firefighters who are being acclaimed for their acts of heroism in Tuesday's carnage.
Addressing the nation in his weekly radio address, Bush declared, "We're at war," vowing that the U.S. response to the attacks would be "sweeping, sustained, and effective."
Later confirming for reporters that bin Laden loomed large in Washington's plans to strike back, the president warned: "If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken."
"We will find those who did it. We will smoke them out of their holes, we'll get them running, and we'll bring them to justice," added Bush, who according to his chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, has not ruled out committing ground troops to the operation.
Bush was spending the weekend at the Camp David retreat in Maryland, where he huddled with top security aides.
Intensified talk of military action heightened pressure on Pakistan, with Islamabad reported to have responded favorably to U.S. requests for assistance.
Bush in fact telephoned Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to thank him for his support, according to officials in Islamabad.
Powell, also speaking from Camp David, likewise hailed Musharraf's "willingness to assist us in whatever might be required in that part of the world, as we determine who these perpetrators are."
Senior U.S. officials said Pakistan agreed to a complete list of specific steps Washington had asked it to take following the September 11th attacks.
"They agreed to all of them," one official told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Their offer is about as complete, unconditional and unqualified as you can get."
"They are completely with us," the official added.
While he declined to reveal precisely what it was that Musharraf had agreed to, he pointedly refused to deny reports the steps include intelligence assistance in tracking down bin Laden and others, as well as help in strikes against Afghanistan.
Other reports have said the United States wants Pakistan to allow the use of its territory or airspace for attacks on Afghanistan.
But in Islamabad, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar cautioned that his government would require that any military action in Afghanistan be sanctioned by the United Nations.
"Pakistan will comply with the decisions of the [U.N.] Security Council," he said.
Bracing for possible U.S. military action in the region, Iran on Saturday announced that it was sealing its 900-kilometer (400-mile) border with Afghanistan to prevent a flood of refugees into the country.
"Military and police forces have been deployed along the eastern border to prevent the influx of would-be Afghan refugees into Iran in the aftermath of probable U.S. attacks," the Iranian Interior Ministry announced, according to report in the official news agency IRNA.
Elsewhere, world leaders counseled for restraint in the face of an expected U.S. onslaught.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has offered Bush his full support but has insisted that any retaliation "must and will be based on hard evidence".
France's Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has said his government's "solidarity does not deprive us of our freedom of judgment" and Germany's Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder admitted: "I will have to make one of the most difficult decisions of my life next week."
Russia's Vladimir Putin, someone with whom Bush has developed a respectful, if shallow, relationship in his brief tenure as president, agreed "evil must be punished" but joined his Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov in a warning that any attack must be carefully thought through.
The chairman of the Arab League, Amr Mussa, said Saturday the Arab world backed the United States in its declared war against terrorism but refrained from pledging support to possible military action.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the only Arab leader not to have condemned the terror attacks, advised Washington against using force in retaliation.
"The United States needs common sense and not force," Saddam said in an open letter addressed to the peoples and governments of the United States and other Western countries.
Departing from his customary diatribes against the United States, his sworn enemy since the 1991 Gulf War, the Iraqi leader urged Americans and other Westerners to "encourage their rulers to demonstrate fairness and perform their duties in accordance with what is right."
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