Posted on 02/02/2002 1:55:58 AM PST by knighthawk
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - President Bush, planning the biggest U.S. military buildup since the Cold War, issued his third warning in a week on Friday to "axis of evil" countries he accuses of seeking nuclear, germ or chemical weapons.
He was condemned in Iran as a bloodthirsty maniac and in North Korea as a moral leper, while Russia said Washington should not try to turn its war on terrorism into a campaign against individual nations.
In Afghanistan, where U.S. forces have all but destroyed the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden which is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on America, tribal fighters buried their dead after a two-day battle for power in the eastern town of Gardez.
A faction led by Haji Saifullah routed forces loyal to Paktia provincial governor Padshah Khan Zadran, recently appointed by Hamid Karzai's U.N.-backed interim administration in Kabul.
The fighting, in which about 50 people were killed, underlined the difficulties facing Karzai as he tries to forge unity and stability in a country riven by tribal and ethnic divisions and shattered by more than 20 years of war.
Bush, who first condemned Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, threatened the countries again on Thursday and returned to the theme on Friday at a meeting of his Republican Party.
"People say, 'What are the consequences?' They will find out in due course if they can't get their house in order. The mighty United States will do whatever it takes to defend our security," Bush said.
"Make no mistake about it, if you threaten us with weapons of mass destruction, if you threaten our allies and friends with weapons of mass destruction, we will do whatever it takes to protect our people," he said.
'MORAL LEPROSY'
North Korea said Bush's comments this week were little short of declaring war and accused his administration of "political immaturity and moral leprosy."
In Iran, influential cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati called Bush a "bloodthirsty maniac." In a sermon, the hard-line ayatollah said "America thinks it can threaten and attack other countries by making terrorism charges."
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov restated Moscow's insistence that the U.S.-led war against terrorism in Afghanistan, launched in response to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed about 3,100 people, must not be extended to other countries.
"It is unacceptable in any circumstances for the fight against terrorism to be conducted with the aim of achieving one or another political aim concerning specific states or regimes," Ivanov said.
Secretary of State Colin Powell softened the U.S. line at the annual World Economic Forum, being held in New York this year, urging global leaders to fight terrorism by waging war on poverty.
"We have to go after poverty, we have to go after despair, we have to go after hopelessness," Powell said at the gathering just 3 miles from the ruins of the World Trade Center.
"We have to show people who might move in the direction of terrorism that there is a better way," Powell said. "We have to rededicate ourselves to freedom and democracy."
The controversy over Bush's blunt rhetoric followed a storm stirred among human rights groups and some U.S. allies over U.S. treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban captives being held in Afghanistan and a Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Canada on Friday urged the United States to clarify how it decides whether the captives are "unlawful combatants" or prisoners of war, a status that would accord them greater rights under international law.
A caller to the U.S. consulate in Karachi on Friday demanded the release of one of the most senior officials in U.S. captivity, former Taliban ambassador to Islamabad Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, and payment of a $2 million ransom, in return for kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
But another e-mail sent to news organizations claimed that Pearl had been killed. "We are checking up on both these conflicting reports and so far we have nothing to confirm he is dead," Tariq Jamil, police chief in the southern city of Karachi, told CNN television.
AL QAEDA THREAT SEEN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
In Manila, Philippine Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, citing arrests of al Qaeda suspects in his country, Singapore and Malaysia, said the network was infiltrating Southeast Asia.
"The al Qaeda network is trying to worm its way into the region. And so we have to prepare for that," Reyes told Philippines television channel ANC.
U.S. troops are training forces hunting Abu Sayyaf Islamic rebels in the southern Philippines. Washington has linked Abu Sayyaf to al Qaeda.
A U.S. judge ruled on Friday that an Indonesian man, whom a prosecutor described as having "direct and troubling ties" to the Sept. 11 hijackers, must remain in jail until his trial on unrelated fraud charges.
Chief U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton said Agus Budiman presented a risk of flight. He said authorities were looking into whether Budiman had any involvement with the hijackings of planes that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Bush cites the need to step up security as one of the reasons he will propose a $2.1 trillion budget for fiscal 2003 next week that promises the biggest military buildup since the Cold War.
Talking to reporters on Friday, Bush said "of course not" when asked if the United States was giving up the possibility of a dialogue with North Korea and Iran. Relations with Iraq are hostile.
"We have to go after poverty, we have to go after despair, we have to go after hopelessness," Powell said...
I just feel compelled to say that while I once admired Powell, I am rapidly losing respect for him, and I wish there were a graceful way to get him out of this administration. What?! The impoverished and oppressed OBL was thereby motivated to commit mass murder upon innocents?
After all those years of Clinton, who seemed pathologically incapable of being honest, it's nice to have a man who seems to share my respect for the ideals embodied in the office he now holds.
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