October 14, 2001	Sunday	Rajab 26, 1422

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WASHINGTON, Oct 13: As US jets and missiles pounded Afghanistan on Saturday, the United States appeared to be preparing to shift its war against terrorism from the air to the ground.

US Vice President Dick Cheney alluded for the first time on Friday to the possible use of ground troops as the air war entered its seventh day.

Talking broadly about options available for Washington, Cheney said the mission could involve “boots on the ground”.

Asked whether President George W. Bush had a master plan for the military campaign, Cheney told PBS public television that “the capabilities are all pretty much signed up to in advance”.

“I mean, you know you’re going to have an intelligence piece of it; you know you’re going to have a military piece that’s probably going to involve air, maybe some special ops, so-called boots on the ground, et cetera.”

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said earlier on Friday that he felt it was appropriate that ground forces should move into areas where US bombs and war planes had destroyed Taliban and Al Qaeda military targets. But he made it clear he was referring to troops belonging to the Afghan opposition that should move against the Taliban.

But Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, also hinted that the war was about to enter a new stage, that might include crack special forces troops.

“As we said before, this will be a sustained effort. And many of the conventional efforts that you see today are stage-setters for follow-on operations,” he said.

“Some of those efforts may be visible, but many will not.”

US special forces were deployed to the region around Afghanistan shortly after the Sept 11 attacks on US targets blamed on Osama bin Laden.

Officials here have refused to confirm reports that the special troops are already on the ground in the country, but officials have said that they have been in and out of Afghanistan seeking intelligence data.

But with the Taliban under intense attack and with top US military officials conceding that their jets and missiles are fast running out of good targets, the stage appears set for commando raids against the leadership.

British ministers and military officials on Friday added fuel to mounting speculation that ground troops may be sent into Afghanistan before the onset of winter in a few weeks.

The closeness of the first snows, thought to be five or six weeks away, is causing huge headaches both for military planners and aid workers.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon said weather conditions would be “particularly difficult” within a few weeks, and that, historically speaking, civil wars in the country tend to peter out over winter.

“That’s obviously a factor that any military planner must take account of,” he said in an interview with the BBC.

Two British commando groups trained in mountain and winter warfare are already in the region, on exercise in Oman, and one of them specializes in mountain and winter warfare.—AFP