WASHINGTON, Oct 11: America on Thursday marked the first month of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington with solemn memorial services and with some of the heaviest pounding of targets in Afghanistan in the five-day-old US-led military campaign against the Taliban.

As the US fired 5,000-pound laser-guided bombs known as “bunker busters” at underground shelters in southern Afghanistan and the Taliban reported heavy civilian casualties, President George Bush told a memorial service at the Pentagon - with the New York Trade Center towers, the two symbols of America targeted in the Sept 11 attacks —— that for the Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, there was no shelter.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about loss of civilian lives in Afghanistan, told reporters after the Pentagon memorial service, the US did not target civilians, but there was no question that when “one is engaged militarily, there will be unintentional loss of life,” which was to be regretted. He admitted that the Taliban’s air defence capability, which was earlier claimed to have been liquidated, still posed a threat to US aircraft.

There was no confirmation from Mr Rumsfeld or other officials of reports, given prominence in sections of the US press, that Pakistan had permitted use of airfields by American forces and that hundreds of US troops had already moved in. Mr Rumsfeld said it was for the countries concerned to characterize the support they were extending to the US and the ways in which they were doing so, and America’s only interest was to get the maximum possible help.

Pakistan has promised logistics support to the US, and says airports in the country will be used only for rescue and relief purposes. It was not also clear whether a possible ground offensive would come from Uzbekistan or Pakistan. Some special forces were already said to have undertaken reconnaissance missions inside Afghanistan.

Daylight raids were carried out on Kabul airport and around Kandahar, which has been a special target because it is the seat of Taliban leader Mulla Omar and also a haunt of-Al Qaeda fighters.

Fresh questions about where the US-led operation was heading were raised by a statement on Thursday by the chief of Britain’s defence staff, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, that the campaign in Afghanistan would go “from winter into the next summer at the very least.” The admiral said it could end soon only if Osama bin Laden was handed over and there was a “government that did not support terrorism”.

A dispatch in The Washington Post quoted US and Pakistani officials as saying the United States and Britain were holding off aerial attacks against Taliban troops and “Arab” troops, arrayed in their thousands in defensive lines on the plains north of Kabul, in a bid to forestall any advance by the Northern Alliance and other rebel groups. This reflects a growing feeling in administration circles here that if the alliance forces enter Kabul without a United Nations presence in the capital and an interim government in place, they might precipitate further chaos and bloodshed. One of the rebel commanders now on the side of the Northern Alliance, Abdurrashid Dostum, is known as a particularly ferocious person. The Arab component of Taliban forces was reckoned at around 6,000.

Mr Rumsfeld would not give a direct answer to questions relating to these reports, but he did say that the US was dealing with concentrations of Taliban military forces and implied that if this worked to the advantage of those opposed to the Taliban, then that would be all to the good. He said a post-Taliban scenario had certainly been under discussion, but that was not something that was deterring what the US was doing to root out terrorists and those sheltering them.

Other reports, reflecting the US administration’s conviction that the Taliban regime is financed and bolstered by Osama bin Laden, said he had provided $100 million in cash and military assistance to the Kabul regime over the past five years.

POWELL: Secretary of State Colin Powell, who leaves in a day or two for Pakistan and India, said in a flurry of television interviews on Wednesday that the important question was not the duration of the current campaign but its outcome. He also echoed President Bush’s earlier remarks that there was no commitment to Gen Pervez Musharraf that the campaign would be a short one.