0
NEW YORK, March 24: Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are regrouping in Afghanistan after the recent end of the biggest ground offensive of the war, and are expected to try to mount attacks against US troops there, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Gen Tommy Franks, head of US Central Command, said on news talk shows on Sunday.
“We saw ... a coalescing of a group in the area where we launched Operation Anaconda a couple of weeks ago, and very successfully eliminated a big chunk of the Al Qaeda,” Cheney said.
“There are still Al Qaeda scattered around Afghanistan. There are, I’m sure, going to be efforts by them to try to organize themselves enough so that they can launch an attack at least on our forces in Afghanistan. We see intelligence to that effect,” he said on CNN’s Late Edition.”
The war effort will continue “for some considerable period of time,” the vice-president said. “There’s a temptation, I think, because there’s not an active bombing campaign underway on any particular day, for people who wants to run out and say, well, it’s over with. It’s not. This is a long-term commitment.”
While Osama bin Laden has eluded capture, Cheney said he believes the Al Qaeda network leader is in Afghanistan or across the border in Pakistan - if he is alive. “But we don’t know,” Cheney acknowledged.
Gen Franks said that the US was getting tremendous support from Pakistani army in stopping the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters cross the borders. While acknowledging that the borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan cannot be “hermetically” sealed, Franks said that with the support from Pakistani army we can stop those fleeing.
The vice-president said the United States would work to ensure that Afghanistan does not deteriorate into another “sanctuary for terrorists.”
Some parts of the country have again been carved up by warlords, as was the case before the Taliban took control.
“After the war between the Afghans and the Soviets, there was a general sense that the outside world walked away. We can’t do that again,” Cheney said on NBC.
President Bush has made it clear that US forces would “stay as long as possible until we’ve wrapped up our mission of eliminating Al Qaeda and making certain that we’ve dealt with the terrorist threat that emerged in Afghanistan,” Cheney said.
IRAQ SITUATION: Mr Cheney downplayed the importance of sending UN weapons inspectors to Iraq and reiterated that Washington was “deadly serious” about preventing Baghdad from acquiring nuclear weapons, adds AFP.
“The issue’s not inspectors. The issue is that he has chemical weapons and he’s used them,” Cheney said in an interview with CNN. “The issue is that he’s developing and has biological weapons. The issue is that he’s pursuing nuclear weapons.”
Friday Washington accused Iraq of trying to distract the United Nations from its refusal to abide by UN Security Council resolutions by submitting a list of questions about the possible return of international weapons inspectors. The Iraqis have reportedly asked how the UN could guarantee that its new inspectors would not spy for the United States — the charge Baghdad levered at the former inspection team before it was withdrawn in December 1998.
The US vice-president, who has just returned from a week-long trip to the Middle East to highlight Washington’s concern about Iraq, said US allies in the region were “equally concerned about the problems we see in Iraq, specifically the development of weapons of mass destruction by (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein.”
“He is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time, and we think that’s cause for concern for us and for everybody in the region,” Cheney said.
“He (Saddam) knows we’re deadly serious. Our friends and allies in the region know we’re deadly serious and that we do need to find a way to address this problem.”
