WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD (REUTERS) — The United States and Britain warned Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban Monday that it faced being crushed by the looming military onslaught against Osama bin Laden and his network.
The message was underlined by neighboring Pakistan, the Taliban’s only diplomatic ally, whose president, Pervez Musharraf, said the movement’s days appeared to be numbered.
“It appears that the United States will take action in Afghanistan. We have conveyed this to the Taliban,” Gen. Musharraf told the BBC.
The Taliban, which acknowledged Sunday it was harboring bin Laden — the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks that left more than 5,700 people dead or missing in the United States — remained defiant and called on its supporters to be ready to repel any attack.
The audacious airborne attacks and the expected retaliation hung over financial markets, helping to drive down stocks in the United States and Europe amid widespread fears of a looming global recession.
Emboldened by the growing pressure on the Taliban, Afghan opposition groups sought to gain support for a Loya Jirga, or grand council of elders and spiritual leaders, to prepare for a post-Taliban future.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said a “considerable” military buildup was taking place in the region around Afghanistan that could lead to the downfall of the Taliban.
“Administration policy is to go after the al Qaeda network and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and if the Taliban does not realize that this . . . might lead to their demise, they will soon come to that conclusion,” Powell said in an interview with CBS Evening News.
He said Bush had not ruled out an attack on Iraq — regarded by Washington as a state that sponsors terrorism — as part of the “second, third or fourth phases of our campaign militarily.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, meanwhile, was set to warn the Taliban in a speech Tuesday that its own infrastructure and fighters would be targeted in the campaign against bin Laden, a British government source said.
Previewing the speech due to be delivered at the Labor Party’s annual conference, the source said Blair would tell the Taliban the combined military might of the United States and Britain would “eliminate their hardware, disrupt their supplies, target their troops.”
Britain said Monday it had frozen nearly $90 million the Taliban had deposited in a London bank, saying, “Ready access to finance is the lifeblood of modern terrorism.”
President Bush said the war he declared on terrorism in response to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had made progress, including the seizure of $6 million in suspect assets.
Bush, outlining the U.S. military buildup in an address to federal emergency workers, said, “I’m proud to report that we’re making progress on many fronts. We’ve just begun. There’s . . . more to come.”
Bush said 30 accounts belonging to bin Laden’s al Qaeda group had been frozen in the United States, along with 20 overseas.
The United States will send its top counterterrorism official, Frank Taylor, to NATO headquarters on Wednesday, raising expectations he will share with U.S. allies and Russia evidence linking bin Laden to the attacks three weeks ago.
Afghanistan’s former king Mohammad Zahir Shah, 86, in exile in Italy since 1973, on Monday announced a landmark pact with the opposition Northern Alliance aimed at ousting the Taliban and installing a moderate government.
Should the Taliban fall, momentum appeared to be building for the former king to act as a neutral figure overseeing a transition of power in the poor and rugged country of 24 million people.
Western diplomats and many Afghans say Zahir Shah is the only figure with the authority to assemble a broad anti-Taliban front. He reigned for 40 years and brought relative peace and prosperity to his country.
The U.S. military has kept a tight veil of secrecy over its plans to punish those responsible for the attacks, but officials who asked not to be named said the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk could be used as a base to fly helicopter-borne special forces into Afghanistan.
The ship steamed out of port near Tokyo on Monday to join three other aircraft carriers that are already within striking distance of Afghanistan.
In anticipation of an offensive, the Taliban defense minister urged his soldiers to resist any attack on Afghanistan, known in history as the graveyard of invaders.
“Fight hard against attacks, defend your country,” Mullah Obaidullah said on a visit to troops based near the Pakistan border. “If your enemy is strong, our God is the strongest.”
As U.S. forces massed, an Iranian naval commander said 41 U.S. and British warships had arrived in the Gulf and the Sea of Oman.
Iran’s Defense Minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani warned Washington that his forces would confront U.S. planes if they encroached on Iranian airspace in any strikes on neighboring Afghanistan.
But Iran is no friend of the Taliban, which it accuses of being primitive and giving Islam a bad name, and Shamkhani confirmed for the first time that Tehran has been arming the Northern Alliance — the main force still battling the Taliban.
The Northern Alliance controls less than 10 percent of Afghan territory and has fought the Taliban since it gained power in 1996 after a period of fighting among rival warlords.
The New York Times said on Monday that Bush had approved covert aid to the Northern Alliance, including possible military funding.
Moving to secure its grip, the beleaguered Taliban agreed to involve tribal elders and war commanders in governing three provinces and said their troops recaptured a key area of western Afghanistan lost at the weekend to opposition forces.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar said Washington was waging war against Islam and the Afghan people.
At the opening of a U.N. debate on terrorism, the United States was at pains to deny the Taliban leader’s claim.
“The terrorists we confront cannot deceive us by attempting to wrap themselves in Islam’s glorious mantle,” said John Negroponte, new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. “There is no division between the United States and Islam.”
New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani also appeared before the 189-nation assembly, saying the attack on the city they both call home left the world body “no room for neutrality.”
Urging the United Nations to isolate and hold accountable any nation supporting terrorism, he declared, “You’re either with civilization or with the terrorists.”
The president of Uzbekistan, which borders Afghanistan and has the most sophisticated airfields in Central Asia, agreed on Monday to open his airspace to U.S. operations.
The Pakistan government, long a key backer of the Taliban, has defied dire warnings from Kabul not to cooperate with the U.S. anti-terrorist drive. Musharraf also faces strong domestic opposition from hard-line Islamic parties.
On the ground in Pakistan, U.N. emergency relief coordinator Kenzo Oshima arrived for a fact-finding trip and the country braced to help hundreds of thousands of Afghans displaced or in flight from hunger and war.
Administration officials said Bush would on Tuesday authorize the reopening of Washington’s Reagan National Airport, which has been closed since Sept. 11 due to fears that its proximity to the White House and other key buildings may pose a security risk.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has warned the nation of a “substantial risk” that U.S. strikes could provoke fresh acts of terrorism within the United States, which was stunned at the ease with which knife-wielding suicide bombers hijacked the four aircraft used in the Sept. 11 attacks.