TAMPA, Fla./DESERT AIRSTRIP, Afghanistan. (REUTERS) — U.S. warplanes bombed a leadership compound in Afghanistan Tuesday, stepping up the pursuit of Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies, as Afghan tribal and ethnic leaders began talks in Germany on the future of their devastated country.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting U.S. command headquarters in Florida, told reporters of the latest raid on the compound used by leaders of both the Taliban and al Qaeda southeast of Kandahar, but said he did not know if any central figures were hit.
“It clearly was a leadership area. Whoever was there is going to wish they weren’t,” he said.
The raid came as U.S. Marines continued to stream into a forward base near Kandahar established on Sunday. The United States intends to use it as a jumping-off point from which to search for bin Laden and thousands of loyalists of his al Qaeda network, as well as help mount an assault on Kandahar, the last remaining stronghold of his Taliban allies.
The United States believes Saudi-born bin Laden masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,900 people.
Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. military campaign, told reporters at his headquarters in Tampa the United States had identified more than 40 sites in Afghanistan that could be linked to weapons of mass destruction.
Most were now in the hands of anti-Taliban forces, and U.S. experts were visiting them one by one.
“We have identified more than 40 places which represent potential for WMD (weapons of mass destruction) research or things of that sort. Of those, a great number are currently under opposition control,” he said.
He said several were makeshift laboratories where U.S. experts had collected chemical samples for analysis. It has been widely reported that bin Laden was trying to acquire chemical or biological weapons, but it is not certain how far his efforts had advanced.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said federal criminal charges had been brought against more than 100 individuals, and nearly 550 people remained in custody on immigration charges as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks.
Defending controversial moves that allow him to detain and try suspects in secret, Ashcroft said an unspecified number of those being held were “suspected terrorists” and some were members of bin Laden’s al Qaeda network.
“We believe we have al Qaeda membership in custody, and we will use every constitutional tool to keep suspected terrorists locked up,” he said without giving any details.
Hunt to begin on ground
Rumsfeld said U.S. troops would soon begin systematically searching for bin Laden and his cohorts on the ground and in their network of underground tunnels and caves, and not just from the air.
“We will pursue them until they have nowhere else to run,” the defense secretary said at the Tampa, Fla., briefing. “Our efforts, of course, will be shifting from cities at some point to hunting down and rooting out terrorists where they hide.”
The Pentagon said 600 Marines were now in place at the desert airstrip they seized in southern Afghanistan on Sunday. More were still sweeping in by air from ships in the northern Indian Ocean.
A world away in tranquil Bonn, by the Rhine, hardened Afghan fighters, tribal leaders, Islamic fundamentalists and exiled royalists settled in for talks to try to end two decades of war that began with a Soviet invasion in December 1979.
The United Nations urged those present not to let Afghanistan slip into chaos and bloodshed again.
“To many skeptics, it appears that is precisely that which you are about to do,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a message to the gathering. “You must prove them wrong.”
The Northern Alliance, which now holds most of Afghanistan, overshadowed the three other delegations of exiles.
A U.S. envoy said all groups agreed on one thing — that the long-exiled former king, Zahir Shah, now 87 and living in Rome, should play a figurehead role in a transitional government.
“The one element which was common to every group I met with, all four of them, was a common vision of how the king would fit in,” envoy James Dobbins said.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer promised foreign aid to rebuild a land of poverty and drought, rubble and minefields — where more than a quarter of children die before the age of five.
World powers and Afghan neighbors hope the talks could set up an interim leadership council of about 15 people — akin to a Cabinet –as a first step on a long path to stable government.
Speed ‘essential’
Speedy success is essential because of the Taliban’s dramatic fall after seven weeks of U.S. bombing, which turned the tables in favor of the Northern Alliance.
The alliance draws support mainly from Uzbeks, Tajiks and other ethnic minorities. Pashtuns, the largest Afghan group, to which the ex-king and most Taliban belong, fear being sidelined.
In southern Afghanistan, the Marines hoisted a U.S. stars and stripes flag over their compound and fought a first engagement overnight, firing from helicopters on a convoy of vehicles heading their way.
U.S. bombers also pounded Kandahar overnight and Afghan tribesmen squeezed the Taliban.
A local news agency said 5,000 anti-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen had taken Spin Boldak on the border with Pakistan.
“We have not left any possibility open that bin Laden can sneak in,” a senior Pakistani government official said.
Vowing to fight the Americans to the death, the Taliban showed no sign of giving up Kandahar, where leader Mullah Mohammad Omar founded his rigid Islamic militia in 1994.
Two weeks ago they held 90 percent of Afghanistan. Now they hold a shrinking swath of heavily mined desert and mountains.
Mullah Omar was still in the ancient walled city and former royal capital, the Taliban said, but they gave no clue to the whereabouts of bin Laden.
Washington believes he is in the area, while others say he may be hiding in remote mountains or even have slipped away.
In the northern town of Taloqan, armed robbers shot to death Swedish cameraman Ulf Stromberg, the eighth journalist killed since the U.S. campaign began Oct. 7.
In Britain, legal sources said Washington had uncovered an Algerian cell operating with links to bin Laden’s network.
In Iran, the government slammed the presence of foreign troops in neighboring Afghanistan, and former Afghan Premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, sheltered by Tehran, called the Bonn talks a U.S. ploy to further its influence.
