- BAGRAM AIRBASE, Afghanistan/WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - U.S. and Afghan forces destroyed the last bastion of the al
Qaeda organization in Afghanistan on Sunday but did not find Osama bin
Laden, the Saudi-born militant who stands accused of masterminding the
Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
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- U.S. forces and their allies were scouring the country
for the man President Bush wants dead or alive.
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- Backed by overwhelming U.S. air power and British and
American commandos on the ground, Afghan fighters overran the mountain
redoubt of Tora Bora which is riddled with caves and tunnels, where hundreds
of bin Laden's toughest al Qaeda loyalists made their last stand.
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- "We've destroyed al Qaeda in Afghanistan and we
have ended the role of Afghanistan as a haven for terrorist activity,"
said Secretary of State Colin Powell on NBC's "Meet the Press."
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- He said bin Laden's effectiveness in Afghanistan had
been destroyed but the man himself remained at large.
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- "We have no reason to believe that he has been either
killed or captured. We don't know where he is," Powell said.
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- "We of course want Osama bin Laden, and as President
Bush said, we will get him. Whether we get him this week, next week, whether
it takes us one year or two years, we will bring him to justice or justice
will be brought to him," he said.
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- National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, on the CBS
show "Face the Nation," said the United States was "putting
every available asset" into trying to find bin Laden.
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- The United States last Thursday released a videotape
in which bin Laden said the results of the Sept. 11 attacks which destroyed
New York's World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon exceeded his advance
expectations. The death toll from the attacks has been revised down to
nearly 3,300.
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- Powell said intelligence information on bin Laden remained
confusing and contradictory. There have been unconfirmed reports for the
past several days that he may have slipped across the border into Pakistan.
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- "There's some information that suggests he might
still be there, and he might have gotten across the border. We don't know.
But you can be sure he is under hot pursuit," Powell said.
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- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a surprise visit
to Afghanistan, said he thought there might still be more fighting to come
in Tora Bora as the U.S. and its allies hunted down militants trying to
escape.
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- He told troops and reporters at the Bagram airbase north
of Kabul: "There are people trying to escape but that gets harder
as night falls. The question is does that mean it's almost over in that
area and I doubt it."
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- RUMSFELD MEETS KARZAI
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- Rumsfeld flew into Bagram and held talks with Hamid Karzai,
head of an interim Afghan government due to take power on Dec. 22.
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- "From the very beginning, we have tried to make
it clear that our operation here was not against Afghanistan, against the
people, against a religion. It was against terrorism," Rumsfeld told
Karzai as they met in a wrecked Soviet-era aircraft hangar.
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- "The United States coveted no territory. We were
here for the sole purpose of expelling terrorists from the country and
establishing a government that would not harbor terrorism."
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- The Karzai government will try to rebuild a nation devastated
by 20 years of war. The previous Taliban rulers, who imposed a form of
unbending, ultra-conservative Islam on the nation and offered bin Laden
and his fighters a safe haven, were driven out by the U.S.-led offensive.
Mullah Mohammad Omar, spiritual leader of the Taliban, is also at large,
being hunted by the U.S.-led coalition.
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- The former Taliban finance minister Mullah Agha Jan Mutasim
said on Sunday the hard-line militia's rule had ended and it would not
oppose a "stable Islamic" government, an Afghan news agency reported.
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- "If a stable Islamic government is established in
Afghanistan, then we don't intend to launch any action against it,"
he told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) from an unknown location inside
Afghanistan.
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- FINAL ASSAULT
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- The fall of Tora Bora meant the foreign Arab, Pakistani
and other volunteers who flocked to bin Laden's banner had lost their final
haven in Afghanistan.
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- "This is the last day for al Qaeda in Afghanistan,"
Haji Zaman, top military commander in the eastern Jalalabad region, told
reporters.
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- Another senior commander said his men had killed 200
al Qaeda fighters and taken 25 prisoner.
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- "Tomorrow we will show you the prisoners and their
weapons. We think (the fighting) will all be soon over," Hazrat Ali
told Reuters on the road back from the front line.
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- The anti-Taliban fighters had spent the day making their
way up two valleys in the jagged White Mountains some 25 miles south of
Jalalabad to try to hunt down remaining al Qaeda fighters and find their
leader in caves burrowed into the hills.
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- Once again U.S. B-52 bombers raced through the skies,
dropping huge bombs on suspected al Qaeda positions through the night and
into the morning.
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- CNN television quoted two anti-Taliban commanders, including
Ali, as saying the bulk of the al Qaeda guerrillas had left the area and
might have escaped over the border to Pakistan.
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- But Pakistan's border is heavily patrolled by the military,
who just a day earlier captured 31 al Qaeda -- mostly Yemenis -- as they
fled Tora Bora for the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan.
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- In an unrelated incident nearby, three U.S. Marines were
injured in an accidental explosion at Kandahar airport.
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- RUMSFELD VISIT KEPT SECRET
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- Rumsfeld disclosed that U.S. forces had found materials
and documents at a former al Qaeda base and were testing them for chemical,
biological and radiation content.
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- The defense secretary had been on a tour of Caucasus
and Central Asian states, but his visit to Afghanistan was kept a secret
until the last moment.
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- U.S. fighters screamed through the sky before his plane
touched down at the Soviet-era Bagram base, guarded by U.S. and British
troops who secured it shortly after Northern Alliance forces drove the
Taliban out of the capital last month.
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- Rumsfeld said at Bagram he expected an international
peacekeeping force for Afghanistan would number 5,000 at most.
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- He said the force, mandated under the U.N.-sponsored
power-sharing agreement reached earlier this month in Germany, would be
made up from forces from four to five countries and the United States would
not be directly involved.
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- Karzai told Rumsfeld the Afghan people were thankful
for America's help in battling terrorism and the Taliban.
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- "We were incapacitated earlier to deal with so many
things at once in the country. You came on board and provided help for
us -- provided the opportunity that we wanted," he said.
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- Powell said the United States would now be pursuing other
tracks in its war on terrorism, by destroying the rest of al Qaeda's global
network.
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- Bush has vowed to take down any and all terrorist organizations
with a global reach.
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- "Now we have to go after the rest of the organization.
That's why the president has made it clear from the very beginning, this
is not a one-shot deal, it's a long-term campaign against terrorism,"
he said.
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