December 10, 2001	Monday	Ramazan 24, 1422

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WASHINGTON, Dec 9: The United States will want custody of Osama bin Laden and Mulla Mohammad Omar if the Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are captured alive.

Making this quite clear on the NBC’s Meet The Press programme on Sunday morning, Vice-President Richard Cheney also said he thought the two should be tried before the military tribunals that President George Bush intends to establish to punish alleged foreign terrorists. He believed both Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were still in Afghanistan.

Mr Cheney disclosed that he had seen pieces of the videotape that the US was reported on Saturday to have obtained from a private home in Jalalabad implicating Osama in the Sept 11 attacks, and said the tape indicated that Osama had significant knowledge of the attacks and made his responsibility clear. According to US officials, Osama is shown on the tape, which is in Arabic, as saying success (in the attacks, presumably) was greater than he expected.

The 40-minute tape, which appears to have been shot by an amateur, is said to offer the most conclusive evidence of a connection between the Sept 11 attacks and Osama.

So far, no evidence has been made public by the US linking Osama or Al Qaeda with the Sept 11 attacks, although British Prime Minister Tony Blair had released on Nov 19 the transcript of a tape purportedly made on Oct 20 quoting Osama bin Laden as saying: “It is what we instigated, for a while, in self-defence. And it was revenge for our people killed in Palestine and Iraq.” Pakistan was believed to have been shown some evidence which, according to a Pakistani official, “sufficient basis for (Osama’s) indictment”.

The Washington Post has reported that one official who has watched the newly-discovered tape, claims that Osama said he was at dinner when the first word came that a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Centre towers in New York. Osama said that he told the others at the dinner, and they cheered. He then indicated on the tape that more was coming.

According to the Post report, “Bin Laden used his outstretched hands to explain that he expected only the top of the Trade Center towers to collapse, down to the level where the airliners struck. The eventual total collapse of both towers, the Al Qaeda leader said, was totally unexpected.”

In his Meet the Press interview, Mr Cheney said the situation in Kandahar was better than it was in the past couple of days, but there were still pockets of Taliban resistance. There was a state of flux in the area, with negotiations going back and forth. He said while there could be no absolute certainty about it, Mulla Omar was still thought to be at some place in the Kandahar area. Osama, too, was considered to be in Afghanistan.