Free Republic

WARSAW -- Poland said late on Monday it would send up to 200 soldiers to join a U.S.-led campaign to disarm Saddam Hussein, maintaining its position as bedrock of Eastern European support for Washington in the Iraq crisis. "We are prepared to use the Polish military contingent to force Iraq to respect UN Security Council Resolution 1441," Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski told a news conference alongside Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Speaking ahead of a speech by President George W. Bush that set the clock ticking to war, Kwasniewski said the Polish troops would lend logistical support to U.S. forces in...

Officials: Anthrax Shown in Co-Worker BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) — Anthrax has been detected in a co-worker of a man who died after contracting a rare inhaled form of the disease and tests at the building where both worked have found evidence of the bacterium, authorities said. A nasal swab from the man, whose name was not immediately made public, tested positive for the anthrax bacterium, Tim O'Conner, regional spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, said Monday. It was not yet clear if anthrax had spread to his lungs or if he had a full-blown case of the disease. ...

Despite a nationwide security crackdown, two Daily News reporters were able to slip potentially deadly carry-on items such as knives, razor blades and scissors past checkpoints at 10 major airports last week as part of an investigation by the paper. One News reporter carried a razor-blade cutter, similar to the weapons used in the Sept. 11 hijackings, aboard a flight from LaGuardia to Washington. Another News reporter cleared security at Newark Airport toting pepper spray, a utility knife and scissors. Guards at Kennedy Airport failed to catch a camping knife with a 21/2-inch steel blade. At the three airports ...

NEW YORK As U.S. and British military strikes began against Afghanistan, residents in the city that bore the brunt of the terrorist attacks faced heightened security at airports, points of entry and elsewhere. But Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Sunday that unless there are specific threats, no bridges, tunnels or public places would be closed. He urged New Yorkers to go about their business, and said Monday's Columbus Day Parade in Manhattan would go on as planned. "We have to go about our normal way of life," he said after marching in a parade on Staten Island. Giuliani said he had ...

CAIRO: Reports suggest that Saudi dissident Osama Bin Laden has moved locations and could be in the northeastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, an official from Afghanistan's government in exile has said. The London-based, Saudi-owned 'Asharq Al-Awsat' newspaper published comments on Sunday made by Ahmed Vali Masood, who said the "latest reports" were that Bin Laden was in Jalalabad, 125 km east of the capital, Kabul. Bin Laden is Washington's prime suspect in the September 11 terror attacks. Afghanistan's Taliban government has admitted that it knows the Saudi dissident's whereabouts, but have so far refused to hand him over to ...

China opposes terrorism of any form, hoping that relevant military strikes on terrorism should be targeted at specific objectives, so as to avoid hurting innocent civilians. A Foreign Ministry spokesman made the remarks when asked to comment on the U.S. military strike on targets in Afghanistan. The spokesman said that the Chinese government opposes terrorism of any form, supports relevant resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council, and encourages to combat terrorism. However, the spokesman noted that relevant military strikes on terrorism should be targeted at specific objectives, so as to avoid hurting innocent civilians. China ...

<p>ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — With Friday's announcement that 1,000 U.S. soldiers were on their way to Uzbekistan – the first acknowledged deployment of troops in the region – many Americans were asking one simple question.</p> <p>What's taking so long?</p> <p>Much of the U.S. public and the international community has been waiting for almost a month for the Bush administration to strike back at Usama bin Laden, his Al Qaeda network and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that supports them both. Yet we still haven't seen anything like the videos of sleek, exploding cruise missiles that became staples of military press briefings ever since the Persian Gulf War.</p>

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian chartered airliner heading from Israel to Siberia exploded Thursday and crashed off the Black Sea coast with at least 76 people on board. U.S. officials said an anti-aircraft missile fired during a military training exercise in Ukraine appeared to have accidentally brought down the plane. ``This looks to be a military training exercise gone terribly awry,'' said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry, however, denied any of its weapons could have hit a civilian aircraft. Earlier, President Vladimir Putin said terrorism could be the cause of the crash. In ...

How the plotters slipped US net Spy networks failed to detect email and satellite conversations used to plot the attack on the US - and now America wants to know what went wrong, reports Duncan Campbell As US forces converge on Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden's satellite phone has not been cut off. But calls to the terrorist leader's laptop-size satphone - relayed via an Inmarsat satellite 40,000 km over the Indian Ocean - are going unanswered. His number - 00873 682505331 - was disclosed earlier this year in the New York trial of his associates for bombing the US embassy ...

Peres, Arafat to issue statement to implement truce plans. By Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz Correspondent and Ha'aretz Service. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres: Arafat making a 'serious' effort to reduce violence. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat at 9:30 A.M. today - the day after Arafat's planned trip to Damascus was unexpectedly canceled. The last-minute cancelation, for the third time in three months, dealt a severe blow to the thaw in Syrian-Palestinian relations that had characterized the past few months. The Peres-Arafat meeting, to take place at the Dehaniyeh Airport in Gaza, is slated to end ...

Passengers on inland flights to pay $2.5 security levy Dror Marom 25.09.2001 18:16 The Ministry of Transport is planning to impose a new security levy on inland flights, as well as a levy on international flights. The levy on inland flights will be significantly lower, at $2.5 per passenger, compared with the $10-15 fee for passengers on international flights. All the levies will apparently go into effect before October, and are intended to cover the new expenses incurred by the application of measures based on the lessons drawn from the terrorist attacks on the planes in the US. Although flight ...

An Attack On Us All Adam Daniel Rotfeld, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): Calamitous crime can leave us dumbfounded, feeling helpless and lacking words. But when the shock fades, a question arises: What should be done now? How to live in a world that will no longer be as it was before Sept. 11? Are we really helpless in the face of such outrageous attacks? The aim of the carefully-orchestrated terrorist strikes was not merely the destruction of two great complexes in two great U.S. cities: the World Trade Center in New York City and the ...

September 24, 2001 ALBANY, N.Y. -- One third of New Yorkers favor establishing internment camps for "individuals who authorities identify as being sympathetic to terrorist causes," according to a poll from the Siena College Research Institute. Fifty percent of those surveyed for the statewide poll said they were opposed to that idea while 15 percent had no opinion. The telephone poll of 610 New York state residents over age 18 was conducted from Sept. 12, the day after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, through Sept. 19. The poll has a margin of error ...

RADEK SIKORSKI, now Poland's deputy foreign minister, fought alongside Afghani guerrillas against the Russians in the 1980s and kept in touch ever since. This is his personal plan for a Western victory in Afghanistan Every rock and every irrigation canal was my cover from Soviet bombing when I travelled through Afghanistan with the mujahideen in 1987. Poland was communist, I was a refugee in Britain and the Afghanis were fighting the Red Army, the same that kept us underfoot. Their struggle was mine and I joined it using a telephoto lens - and one or two bursts from a Kalashnikov ...