The United States was Wednesday rejoicing in the Afghan Taliban's growing diplomatic isolation, one day after President George W. Bush hinted that Afghans should rid themselves of their fundamentalist rulers.
Bush, rallying a global diplomatic, financial and military coalition against terrorism, has singled out the Taliban following the deadly terror assaults in the United States two weeks ago because they are sheltering Washington's prime suspect, Osama bin Laden.
But while Bush and other top officials made no secret of their distaste for the Islamic extremists who run Afghanistan, the president stressed Tuesday that ousting the Taliban was not his main goal in the war against terror.
"The mission is to root out terrorists, to find them and bring them to justice," Bush said during a joint appearance here with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi after a "great discussion" at the White House.
"One way to do that is to ask for the cooperation of citizens within Afghanistan who may be tired of having the Taliban in place or tired of having Osama bin Laden, people from foreign soils, in their own land willing to finance this repressive government."
But, even as US officials stepped up contacts with the Afghan forces opposing the Taliban, including the country's exiled former king, Bush aides insisted Washington was not interested in reshaping other nations.
Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said any US military retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon "is not designed to replace one regime with another."
Fleischer said Washington would welcome help from the rebel Northern Alliance, which controls enclaves in northern Afghanistan along borders with central Asian states where some US military forces have been deployed. The area is considered crucial to any strike in the impoverished nation.
US contacts with Afghan players also included a meeting Tuesday between the US charge d'affaires in Rome and the 86-year-old former king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who was deposed in a 1973 coup, Boucher said.
But a top general from the anti-Taliban opposition warned Tuesday that his forces would turn on the United States if it tries to impose its direct rule over Afghanistan following any US anti-terror attacks there.
"If the Americans want to determine our state's policy, we will fight their soldiers," the deputy defense minister of Afghanistan's government-in-exile, General Atikullah Baryalay, told the Russian daily Rossiskaya Gazeta.
He said the opposition would support a United Nations-led operation as long as the Afghans' right to self-determination was not jeopardized.
"Afghans have never admitted and will never admit a diktat from abroad," Baryalay said.
Bush welcomed a "strong statement" by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who a day earlier said Moscow would step up military aid to the rebels, who lost Kabul to the Taliban in 1996.
But Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar cautioned against US military assistance to the rebels, warning such a move was "a recipe for great suffering for the people of Afghanistan."
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's regime has come under fire at home for offering aid to the United States.
Fleischer emphasized Washington would be "mindful of stability in the region," but warned that would not give the Taliban "a free pass" out from under the threat of likely US military action.
Bush also welcomed the militia's increasing diplomatic isolation, saying he was "most pleased" with Saudi Arabia's decision to break off diplomatic ties, leaving Pakistan as the only nation with such relations with the Taliban.
Islamabad has said it will not follow suit, and Bush did not ask Musharraf's government to do so, saying instead he was "most pleased" with its help and vowing to "make sure that Pakistan is a stable country" in the wake of increasingly likely US military action in the region.
Meanwhile, the White House announced Bush would cut drastically cut short his planned Asia trip next month from around two weeks to two days as officials in Washington direct the campaign against terror.
The president called for broader power to tap telephones and expanded authority to detain suspects – particularly non-US citizens – and promised he was mindful of preserving constitutionally protected civil liberties.
"But we're at war, a war we're going to win. And in order to win the war, we must make sure that the law enforcement men and women have got the tools necessary, within the Constitution, to defeat the enemy," he told some of the 4,000 FBI agents taking part in the largest investigation in US history – WASHINGTON (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
