Posted on 09/21/2001 4:52:31 PM PDT by Geronimo
The US and Britain are ready to go it alone with military action against Osama bin Laden, prime suspect behind last week's terrorist atrocities, and his protectors in Afghanistan.
According to senior British officials, President George W. Bush and Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, have agreed that a tight command structure is needed and that the military operation should be undertaken largely, perhaps wholly, by their own forces.
The White House declined to comment. However, one lesson US military planners took from Nato's bombing campaign in Kosovo in 1999 was that a large alliance complicates and delays the choice of objectives.
President Jacques Chirac indicated that France was willing to take part but it ws not yet clear if the French would play a role. German involvement is thought unlikely because the US and UK fear it would be difficult for Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to win political approval.
The allies have not ruled out a role for Russia, which lies close to Afghanistan. Alexander Kotenkov, special representative of Russian president Vladimir Putin to parliament, said: "I don't think that our troops will take part in operations outside the Russian Federation."
However, he left open the possibility of using Russian specialists and intelligence.
The military action would include a difficult search-and-destroy operation in mountainous terrain, involving special forces.
Mr Blair, along with other European governments, is pressing Mr Bush to reject the view of hawks in his administration calling for strikes against other countries harbouring terrorists, at least at this stage, for fear of weakening the impressive international coalition of support.
British officials said talks between the two leaders over dinner in Washington on Thursday night focused almost entirely on Afghanistan. "The prime minister has the sense that he [Bush] is someone who, whatever advice he may get from all sorts of quarters, is the guy who is going to make the decisions."
The seriousness of Mr Blair's intent was underlined by the fact that senior military planners accompanied him to Washington.
In his speech to Congress on Thursday night, Mr Bush laid out an ultimatum to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers to hand over Mr bin Laden.
But on Friday the Taliban reiterated its refusal to hand him over unless Washington provided clear proof of his guilt in last week's attacks. Abdul Salam Zaeef, Afghanistan's ambassador to Pakistan, read a statement issued by the Taliban's leading Muslim clerics warning that any attempt by the US to launch an attack on Afghanistan would be met with jihad, or holy war.
In northern Afghanistan, an upsurge of fighting was reported between Taliban and opposition forces seeking revenge for the assassination of their leader and taking advantage of threats of US strikes.
Additional reporting by Judy Dempsey in Brussels, Andrew Jack in Moscow, and Edward Luce and Farhan Bokhari in Peshawar, Pakistan
God speed boys...
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