- KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters)
- The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan entered its fourth month on Monday amid
growing signs of frustration in Washington at the failure to capture Osama
bin Laden and his top Taliban ally, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
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- A military spokesman said U.S. forces were going to stop
''chasing the shadows'' of bin Laden and Mullah Omar, their two top targets
in the Afghan war, and focus on wiping out remaining pockets of al Qaeda
resistance while building better intelligence on the elusive leaders.
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- Bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network is blamed for the Sept.
11 attacks on the United States that killed about 3,000 people, and Mullah
Omar, the leader of the deposed radical Islamic Taliban rulers of Afghanistan
who gave al Qaeda shelter, have both eluded capture despite an intense
manhunt.
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- British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the first Western
head of government to visit Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban,
and a delegation of U.S. senators promised Kabul's new leaders they would
not desert them after the war.
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- ``We are not going to repeat the mistake that was made
after the Soviets were pushed out of here and the rest of the world essentially
walked away,'' Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said after meeting Afghan
interim Premier Hamid Karzai.
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- Washington lost interest in Afghanistan after its covert
aid helped oust the invading Soviet Red Army in 1989, reigniting civil
strife.
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- Connecticut Democrat Joseph Lieberman said, ``We are
going to be here a lot longer than the Taliban, together with our coalition
partners, for the reconstruction of this country and the creation of democracy
and real economic opportunity for the people.''
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- JETS POUND AL QAEDA CAMP
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- Blair, who flew into Bagram after meeting Pakistani and
Indian leaders in a bid to cool tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors,
said, ``Afghanistan has been a failed state for too long and the whole
world has paid the price.''
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- As the politicians discussed the rebuilding of a country
devastated by two decades of war, U.S. jets continued to pound a suspected
al Qaeda camp in eastern Afghanistan, while on the ground special forces
pursued scattered fighters attempting to regroup and sought intelligence
on bin Laden.
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- A U.S. military official said sweeps of Tora Bora caves
by U.S. special forces and anti-Taliban Afghan forces found evidence that
bin Laden had been there, but it was unclear how recently.
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- ``There was evidence that he was there,'' said Rear Adm.
Craig Quigley, a spokesman for Central Command in Florida which is running
the military operation on Afghanistan. ``We have no idea at all on the
time frame,'' he added.
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- The search of eight cave complexes in Tora Bora used
by al Qaeda forces in their final stand, expected to be completed in the
next few days, yielded ``no tactical intelligence that would lead you to
have to move on something really quickly,'' Quigley said.
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- The Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. aircraft bombed parts
of Paktia province on Monday, where bin Laden once ran training camps and
where he or his fighters may have taken refuge.
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- A senior U.S. military official said the aircraft attacked
a cave complex at Zhawar Kili near the Tora Bora region on Thursday, Friday
and Sunday, and the region remained among the most dangerous for U.S. forces
and their Afghan allies.
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- ``They (al Qaeda) are attempting to try to regroup so
that they can amass for leadership and mischief purposes,'' Navy Rear Adm.
John Stufflebeem told a Pentagon briefing after bombing was again reported
in the area on Monday.
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- At least four U.S. helicopters landed near the Zhawar
Kili camp on Monday, delivering ground troops to search for remnants of
al Qaeda and the Taliban militia, AIP said.
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- AIRSTRIKES HIT TANKS, ARTILLERY
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- U.S. forces bombed a number of military vehicles, artillery
pieces and tanks at Zhawar Kili, and planes also struck anti-aircraft weapons
at another site near Khost on Sunday.
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- Despite concern among some Afghan tribal leaders about
the growing civilian toll from the bombing campaign that began on Oct.
7, the new U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said after arriving
on Saturday the United States would keep bombing until it had eliminated
the Taliban and al Qaeda.
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- Blair, one of President Bush's staunchest allies in the
fight against terrorism, said earlier that the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan
would not end until al Qaeda's Saudi-born chief and the Taliban leader
had been tracked down.
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- But after both men apparently slipped through the noose
of encircling anti-Taliban fighters and U.S. special forces in recent weeks,
a Pentagon spokesman said they would stop speculating about the whereabouts
of the duo, whose capture or death Washington declared a key aim of the
war.
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- ``We're going to stop chasing ... the shadows of where
we thought he was and focus more on the entire picture of the country,
where these pockets of resistance are, what do the anti-Taliban forces
need, so that we can develop a better intelligence picture,'' said Stufflebeem.
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- ``The job is not complete and those leaders whom we wish
to have from the al Qaeda and Taliban chain of command, we are casting
a wide net -- a worldwide net, as well as regional, for where they are,''
he said.
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- 'ASSUMED TOO MUCH'
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- U.S. officials had raised hopes that Mullah Omar might
be captured over the weekend as anti-Taliban forces negotiated with tribal
chiefs in Baghran, northwest of Kandahar, for the surrender of Taliban
fighters thought to be protecting the cleric. But there was no sign of
him and there were conflicting reports he either fled or was never in Baghran.
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- Stufflebeem said U.S. officials probably ``assumed a
little too much'' in believing negotiations were about Mullah Omar.
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- ``We will stop speculating openly about where they may
be at or where they think they're at as we build this intelligence picture
... to move when the time is right, without giving anything away,'' he
said of bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
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- A 14-year-old boy became the conflict's latest fugitive,
slipping out of the grip of Afghan elders who were to decide whether to
hand him over to the Americans for allegedly killing a U.S. soldier in
an ambush.
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- In Khost, elders put off a meeting to decide the fate
of the boy suspected of killing Sgt. Nathan Ross Chapman in an ambush on
Friday, because he had vanished.
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- Singapore said it believed it had broken up a network
of militants targeting the U.S. Embassy and American businesses after arresting
15 people with suspected links to al Qaeda.
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- The U.S. military has now taken charge of 346 Taliban
and al Qaeda prisoners, who are being interrogated for information on bin
Laden, Mullah Omar and al Qaeda.
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- The former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul
SalamZaeef, was detained over the weekend, the highest-ranking official
of the fallen government to be captured.
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- Many of the prisoners are expected to be moved shortly
to a U.S. military base on the coast of Cuba.
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